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EDITED EY 

STUART J. REID 




LOJ^n BEACONSFIELD 



^-5. 





^«- 'J^'a'nc/a€^4as/?z^.^^.f^i^/u^<f'£^?n, 



LORD BEACONSFIELD 



BY 

}- .,0 



Jf A? FROUDE 



'' He was a man^ take him for all in all. 
We shall not look upon his like again ' 

Hamlet, Act I. Scene 2 




NEW YORK 
HARPER & BROTHERS, FRANKLIN SQUARE 



1890 



__JJ / . ^' O s 



CONTENTS 



CHAPTER I 

PAGE 

Carlyle on Lord Beaconsfield — Judgment of the House of Com- 
mons—Family history — The Jews in Spain— Migration to 
Venice — Benjamin DTsraeli the elder — Boyhood of Isaac 
Disraeli ......... \. I 



CHAPTER II 

Family of Isaac Disraeli — Life in London — Birth of his children — 
Abandons Judaism and joins the Church of England — Educa- 
tion of Benjamin Disraeli — School days— Picture of them in 
'Vivian Grey' and * Contarini Fleming' — Self-education at 
home — Early ambition . . . . . . . .12 



CHAPTER III • 

The Austen family — Choice of a profession — Restlessness — Enters 
a solicitor's office — ' Vivian Grey' — Illness— Travels abroad — 
Migration of the Disraelis to Bradenham— Literary satires — 
* Popanilla ' — Tours in the East— Gibraltar — Cadiz— Seville — 
Mountain adventures— Improved health — Malta — ^James Clay 
— Greece — Yanina — Redshid Pasha— Athens — Constantinople 
Plains of Troy and Revolutionary epic— Jaffa — Jerusalem — 
Egypt — Home letters — Death of William Meredith — Return 
to England . . . .20 



VI LORD BEACONSFIELD 



CHAPTER IV 



* Contarini Fleming' — The poetical life — Paternal ad vice— A poet, 
or not a poet ? — ' Revolutionary Epic ' — Disraeli submits to an 
unfavourable verdict — Success of the novels— Disraeli a new 
star — London society— Political ambition — Mrs. Wyndham 
Lewis— Financial embarrassments — Portraits of Disraeli by N. 
P.Willis — Lady DufFerin and others — Stands for High Wycombe 
— Speech at the Red Lion — Tory Radicalism — Friendship with 
Lord Lyndhurst — Self-confidence — Vindication of the British 
Constitution — Conservative reaction — Taunton election — 
Crosses swords with O'Connell— The Runnymede Letters — 
Admitted into the Carlton Club— ' Henrietta Temple' and 
* Venetia ' . . . •45 



CHAPTER V 

Returned to Parliament for Maidstone — Takes his place behind 
Sir R. Peel — Maiden speech — Silenced by violence — Peel's 
opinion of it— Advice of Shiel — Second speech on Copyright — 
Completely successful state of politics — England in a state of 
change — Break-up of ancient institutions — Land and its duties 
— Political economy and Free Trade— Struggle on the Corn 
Laws . , . . . . . . . . • 67 



CHAPTER VI 

Disraeli's beliefs, political and religious — Sympathy with the 
people — Defends the Chartists — The people, the middle- 
classes, and the aristocracy — Chartist Riots — Smart passage at 
arms in the House of Commons —Marriage — Mrs. Wyndham 
Lewis— Disraeli as a husband . . . . . -83 



CHAPTER VII 

The enthusiasm of progress— Carlyle and Disraeli —Protection and 
Free Trade— Sir Robert Peel the Protectionist champion — 



CONTENTS VU 

PAGE 

High Church movement at Oxford — The Church as a Conser- 
vative power — Effect of the Reform Bill — Disraeli's personal 
views —Impossible to realise — Election of 1841— Sir Robert 
Peel's Ministry — Drift towards Free Trade— Peel's neglect of 
Disraeli— Tariff of 1842— Young England —Symptoms of revolt 
— First skinnish with Peel— Remarkable speech on Ireland . 91 



CHAPTER VIII 

Young England and the Oxford Tractarians — Disraeli a Hebrew at 
heart — ' Coningsby ' — Sidonia— ' Sybil ; or the Two Nations ' — 
The great towns under the new creed — Lords of the soil, as they 
were and as they are — Disraeli an aristocratic socialist — Practi- 
cal working of Parliamentary institutions — Special importance 
of 'Sybil' . 107 



CHAPTER IX 

The New Gospel— Effect on English character — The Manchester 
School — Tendencies of Sir Robert Peel — The Corn Laws — Peel 
brought into office as a Protectionist — Disraeli and Peel — Pro- 
tracted duel — Effect of Disraeli's speeches — Final declaration 
of Peel against the Corn Laws — Corn Laws repealed— Lord 
George Bentinck — Irish Coercion Bill — The Canning episode — 
Defeat and fall of Peel —Disraeli succeeds to the Leadership 
of the Conservative Party 129 



CHAPTER X 

♦"^iDisraeli as Leader of the Opposition— Effects of Free Trade — 
Scientific discoveries — Steam — Railroads— Commercial revolu- 
tion — Unexampled prosperity — Twenty-five years of Liberal 
government — Disraeli's opinions' and general attitude — Party 
government and the conditions of it — Power of an Oppo- 
sition Leader — Never abused by Disraeli for party interests — 
Special instances — The coup d^etat — The Crimean War — 
The Indian Mutiny — The Civil War in America — Remarkable 
warning against playing with the Constitution . . . 149 

a 



Vlii LORD BEACONSFIELD 



CHAPTER XI 

PAGE 

Literary work — * Tancred ; or, the New* Crusade ' — Modern philo- 
sophy — The 'Vestiges of the Natural History of Creation ' — * Life 
of Lord George Bentinck ' — Disraeli's religious views — Revela- 
tion as opposed to Science — Dislike and dread of Rationalism — 
Religion and statesmanship — The national creed the supplement 
of the national law — Speech in the theatre at Oxford — Disraeli 
on the side of the angels . 165; 



CHAPTER XH 

Indifference to money — Death of Isaac Disraeli — Purchase of 
Hughenden — Mrs. Brydges Willyams of Torquay — An assigna- 
tion with unexpected results — Intimate acquaintance with Mrs. 
"Willyams— Correspondence — Views on many subjects — The 
Crown of Greece — Louis Napoleon — Spanish pedigree of Mrs. 
Willyams .......... 178- 



CHAPTER XHI 

Fall of the Whigs in 1867 — Disraeli as Chancellor of the Exchequer 
— Reform Bill why undertaken — Necessities, real or fancied, of 
a Party Leader — Alternatives — Split in the Cabinet— Disraeli 
carries his point — Niagara to be shot — Retirement of Lord 
Derby — Disraeli Prime Minister-v^Various judgments of his 
character — The House of Commons responsible for his eleva- 
tion — Increasing popularity with all classes . . . .188 



CHAPTER XIV 

Reply of the Liberals to the Tory Reform Bill— State of Ireland— 
The Protestant Establishment— Resolutions proposed by Mr. 



CONTENTS ix 

PAGE 

Gladstone— Decay of Protestant feeling in England — Protestant 
character of the Irish Church— The Upas Tree— Mr. Gladstone's 
Irish policy— General effect on Ireland of the Protestant 
Establishment — Voltaire's opinion — Imperfect results — The 
character of the Protestant gentry— Nature of the proposed 
change — Sprung on England as a surprise — Mr. Gladstone's 
resolutions carried — Fall of Disraeli's Government . . -199 



CHAPTER XV 

The calm of satisfied ambition— A new novel—' Lothair '—Survey 
of English society— The modern aristocracy — Forces working 
on the surface and below it — Worship of rank — Cardina 
Grandison — Revolutionary Socialism — Romeward drift of the 
higher classes — ' Lothaij: ' by far the most remarkable of all 
Disraeli's writings 215 



CHAPTER XVI 

The exhausted volcanoes — Mr. Gladstone's failure and unpopularity 
— Ireland worse than before — Loss of influence in Europe — 
The Election of 1874 — Great Conservative majority — Disraeli 
again Prime Minister with real power — His general position as 
a politician — Problems waiting to be dealt with — The relations 
between the Colonies and the Empire — The restoration of the 
authority of the law in Ireland — Disraeli's strength and Disraeli's 
weakness — Prefers an ambitious foreign policy — Russia and 
Turkey— The Eastern question — Two possible policies and the 
effects of each — Disraeli's choice — Threatened war with Russia 
—The Berlin Conference — Peace with honour — ^Jingoism and 
fall of the Conservative party — Other features of his adminis- 
tration — Goes to the House of Lords as Earl of Beaconsfield and 
receives the Garter — Public Worship Act — Admirable distri- 
bution of patronage — Disraeli and Carlyle — Judgment of a 
conductor of an omnibus ....... 232 



I 



LORD BEACONSFIELD 



CHAPTER XVII 



Retirement from office — Dignity in retreat — Hughenden — Lord 
Beaconsfield as a landlord — Fondness for country life — * En- 
dymion ' — Illness and death — Attempted estimate of Lord 
Beaconsfield — a great man ? or not a great man? — Those only 
great who can forget themselves — Never completely an English- 
man — Relatively great, not absolutely — Gulliver among Lilli- 
putians — Signs in ' Sybil ' of a higher purpose, but a purpose 
incapable of realisation — Simplicity and blamelessness in private 
life — Indifference to fortune — Integrity as a statesman and 
administrator 254 

Index 263 



LORD BEACONSFIELD 



CHAPTER I 

Carlyle on Lord Beaconsfield — Judgment of the House of Commons— 
Family History — The Jews in Spain — Migration to Venice — 
Benjamin B'IsraeU the Elder — Boyhood of Isaac Disraeli. 

Carlyle, speaking to me many years ago of parliamentary 
government as he had observed the working of it in this 
country, said that under this system not the fittest men were 
chosen to administer our affairs, but the ' unfittest.' The 
subject of the present memoir was scornfully mentioned as 
an illustration ; yet Carlyle seldom passed a sweeping 
censure upon any man without pausing to correct himself. 
' Well, well, poor fellow,' he added, ' I dare say if we knew 
all about him we should have to think differently.' I do 
not know that he ever did try to think diiferently. His 
disposition to a milder judgment, if he entertained such a 
disposition, was scattered by the Reform Bill of 1867, 
which Carlyle regarded as the suicide of the English nation. 
In his ' Shooting Niagara ' he recorded his own verdict on 
that measure and the author of it. 

* For a generation past it has been growing more and 
more evident that there was only this issue ; but now the 

B 



2 LORD BEACONSFIELD 

issue itself has become imminent, the distance of it to be 
guessed by years. Traitorous pohticians grasping at votes, 
even votes from the rabble, have brought it on. One cannot 
but consider them traitorous ; and for one's own poor share 
would rather have been shot than have been concerned in 
it. And yet, after all my silent indignation and disgust, I 
cannot pretend to be clearly sorry that such a consummation 
is expedited. I say to myself, Well, perhaps the sooner 
such a mass of hypocrisies, universal mismanagements, and 
brutal platitudes and infidelities ends, if not in some im- 
provement then in death and finis^ may it not be the 
better? The sum of our sins increasing steadily day by 
day will at least be less the sooner the settlement is. Nay, 
have I not a kind of secret satisfaction of the malicious or 
even of the judiciary kind {Schadenfreude^ " mischief 
joy," the Germans call it, but really it is "justice joy" 
withal) that he they call Dizzy is to do it ; that other 
jugglers of an unconscious and deeper type, having sold 
their poor mother's body for a mess of official pottage, this 
clever, conscious juggler steps in ? " Soft, you, my honour- 
able friends : /will weigh out the corpse of your mother — 
mother of mine she never was, but only step-mother and 
milch cow — and you shan't have the pottage — not yours 
you observe, but mine." This really is a pleasing trait of 
its sort ; other traits there are abundantly ludicrous, but 
they are too lugubrious even to be momentarily pleasant. 
A superlative Hebrew conjuror spell-binding all the great 
lords, great parties, great interests of England to his hand 
in this manner, and leading them by the nose like helpless 
mesmerised somnambulist cattle to such issue ! Did the 
world ever see a flebile ludibrium of such magnitude 
before? Lath-sword and scissors of Destiny, Pickle- 



carlyle's opinion of him 3 

herring and the three Parcse aUke busy in it. This too 
I suppose we had deserved ; the end of our poor old 
England (such an England as we had at last made of it) 
to be not a fearful tragedy, but an ignominious farce as 
well.' 

The consequences of the precipitation over the cataract 
not being immediate, and Government still continuing, 
over which a juggler of some kind must necessarily pre- 
side, Carlyle, though hope had forsaken him, retained his 
preference for the conscious over the unconscious. He 
had a faint pleasure in Disraeli's accession to power in 
1874. He was even anxious that I should myself accept a 
proposal of a- seat in Parliament which had been made to 
me, as a quasi follower of Disraeli — not that he trusted 
him any better, but he thought him preferable to a worse 
alternative. He was touched with some compunction 
for what he had written when Disraeli acknowledged 
Carlyle's supremacy as a man of letters — offered him rank 
and honours and money, and offered them in terms as 
flattering as his own proudest estimate of himself could 
have dictated. Accept such offers Carlyle could not ; but 
he was affected by the recognition that of all English 
ministers the Hebrew conjuror should have been the only 
one who had acknowledged his services to his country, and 
although he disapproved and denounced Disraeli's policy in 
the East he did perceive that there might be qualities in 
the man to which he had not done perfect justice. 

However that may be, Disraeli was a child of Parliament. 
It was Parliament and the confidence of Parliament which 
gave him his place in the State. For forty years he was in 
the front of all the battles which were fought in the House 
of Commons, in opposition or in office, in adversity or in 

B 2 



4 LORD BEACONSFIELD 

success, in conflict and competition with the most faillOuS 
debaters of the age. In the teeth of prejudice, without 
support save in his own force of character, without the 
advantage of being the representative of any popular cause 
w^hich appealed to the imagination, he fought his way till 
the consent of Parliament and country raised him to the 
Premiership. 

Extraordinary qualities of some kind he must have 
possessed. No horse could win in such a race who had not 
blood and bone and sinew. Whether he was fit or unfit to 
govern England, the House of Commons chose him as their 
best ; and if he was the charlatan which in some quarters 
he is supposed to have been, the Parliament which in so 
many years failed to detect his unworthiness is itself unfit 
to be trusted with the nation's welfare. He was not borne 
into power on the tide of any outside movement. He was 
not the advocate of any favourite measure with which his 
name was identified. He rose by his personal qualifications 
alone, and in studying what those qualifications were we 
are studying the character of Parliament itself. 

The prophets who spoke of the dispersion of the Jews 
as a penalty for their sins described a phenomenon which 
probably preceded the Captivity. Through Tyre the Hebrew 
race had a road open through which they could spread along 
the shores of the Mediterranean. There was a colony of 
them in Rome in the time of Cicero. In Carthage they 
were among a people who spoke their own language. It 
is likely that they accompanied the Carthaginians in their 
conquests and commercial enterprises, and were thus intro- 
duced into Spain, where a Jewish community undoubtedly 
existed in St. Paul's time, and where it survived through 
all changes in the fortunes of the Peninsula. Under the 



THE JEWS IN SPAIN 5 

Arabs the Jews of Spain preserved undisturbed their 
pecuHar characteristics. As the crescent waned before the 
cross they intermarried with Christian famihes, and con- 
formed outwardly with the estabHshed faith while they re- 
tained in secret their own ceremonies. 

The Jewish people, says Isaac Disraeli in his ' Genius of 
Judaism,' are not a nation, for they consist of many nations. 
They are Spanish or Portuguese, German or Polish, and, like 
the chameleon, they reflect the colours of the spot they rest 
on. The people of Israel are like water running through 
vast countries, tinged in their course with all varieties of the 
soil where they deposit themselves. Every native Jew as a 
political being becomes distinct from other Jews. The 
Hebrew adopts the hostilities and the alliances of the land 
where he was born. He calls himself by the name of his 
country. Under all these political varieties the Jew of the 
Middle Ages endeavoured to preserve his inward peculiari- 
ties. In England, in France, in Germany, in Italy, he 
enjoyed for the sake of his wealth a fitful toleration, with 
intervals of furious persecution. From England he was 
expelled at the beginning of the fourteenth century, and his 
property was confiscated to the State. In crusading Spain 
he had not ventured to practise his creed in the open day, 
and thus escaped more easily. He was unmolested as long 
as he professed a nominal Christianity. He was wealthy, 
he was ingenious, he was enterprising. In his half-trans- 
parent disguise he intermarried with the proudest Castilian 
breeds. He took service under the State, and rose to the 
highest positions, even in the Church itself. A Jew who 
had not ceased to be a Jew in secret became Primate of 
Spain, and when the crowns of Castile and Aragon 
becanie united it was rgckoiied thjit there wa„s scarcely a 



6 LORD BEACONSFIELD 

noble family in the two realms pure from intermixture of 
Jewish blood. His prosperity was the cause of his ruin. 
The kingdom of Granada fell at last before Ferdinand and 
Isabella, and the Church of Spain addressed itself, in grati- 
tude to Providence, to the purifying of the Peninsula from 
the unholy presence of the wealthy unbeliever. 

The Jews who were willing to break completely with 
their religious associations remained undisturbed. The 
Inquisition undertook the clearance of the rest, and set to 
work with characteristic vigour. Rank was no protection. 
The highest nobles were among the first who were called 
for examination before Torquemada's tribunal. Tens of 
thousands of the ' new Christians ' who were convicted of 
having practised the rites of their own religion after out- 
ward conformity with Christianity, were burnt at the stake as 
* relapsed.' Those who could escape fled to other countries 
where a less violent bigotry would allow them a home. 
Venice was the least intolerant. Venice lived upon its com- 
merce, and the Jews there, as always, were the shrewdest 
traders in the world. The Venetian aristocrats might treat 
them as social pariahs, rate them on the Rialto, and spit 
upon their gabardines, but they had ducats, and their 
ducats secured them the protection of the law. 

Among those who thus sought and found the hospitality 
of the Adriatic republic at the end of the fifteenth century 
was a family allied with the house of Lara, and perhaps 
entitled to bear its name. They preferred, however, to 
break entirely their connection with the country which had 
cast them off. They called themselves simply DTsraeli, or 
Sons of Israel, a name, says Lord Beaconsfield, never borne 
before or since by any other family, in order that their race 
might be for ever recognised. At Venice they lived and 



THE DISRAELI FAMILY 7 

throve, and made money for two hundred years. Towards 
the middle of the last centm-y, when Venice was losing her 
commercial pre-eminence, they began to turn their eyes else- 
where. Very many of their countrymen were already doing 
well in Holland. England was again open to them. Jews 
were still under some disabilities there, but they were in 
no danger of being torn by horses in the streets under 
charge of eating children at their Passover. They could 
follow their business and enjoy the fruits of it; and the 
head of the Venetian house decided that his second son, 
Benjamin, ' the child of his right hand,' should try his 
fortune in London. The Disraelis retained something of 
their Spanish pride, and did not like to be confounded with 
the lower grades of Llebrews whom they found already 
established there. The young Benjamin was but eighteen 
when he came over ; he took root and prospered, but he 
followed a line of his own and never cordially or intimately 
mixed with the Jewish community, and the tendency to 
alienation was increased by his marriage. 

'My grandfather,' wrote Lord Beaconsfield, 'was a man 
of ardent character, sanguine, courageous, speculative, and 
fortunate; with a temper which no disappointment could 
disturb and a brain full of resources.' He made a fortune, 
he married a beautiful woman of the same religion as his 
own and whose family had suffered equally from persecu- 
tion. The lady was ambitious of social distinction, and 
she resented upon her unfortunate race the slights and 
disappointments to which it exposed her. Her husband 
took it more easily. He was rich. He had a country house 
at Enfield, where he entertained his friends, played whist, 
and enjoyed himself, ' notwithstanding a y\^ife who never 
pardoned him his nnme,' So successful he had been that 



8 LORD BEACONSFIELD 

he saw his way to founding a house which might have 
been a power in Europe. But the more splendid his 
position the more bitter would have been his wife's feelings. 
He retired therefore early from the field, contented with 
the wealth which he had acquired. Perhaps his resolution 
was precipitated by the character of the son who was the 
only issue of his marriage. Isaac Disraeli was intended 
for the heir of business, and Isaac showed from the first 
a determined disinclination for business of any sort or kind. 
' Nature had disqualified the child from his cradle for the 
busy pursuits of men.' ' He grew up beneath a roof of 
worldly energy and enjoyment, indicating that he was of a 
different order from those with whom he lived.' Neither 
his father nor his mother understood him. To one he was 
'an enigma,' to the other 'a provocation.' His dreamy, 
wandering eyes were hopelessly unpractical. His mother 
was irritated because she could not rouse him into energy. 
He grew on ' to the mournful period of boyhood, when 
eccentricities excite attention and command no sympathy.' 
Mrs. Disraeli was exasperated when she ought to have been 
gentle. Her Isaac was the last drop in her cup of bitterness, 
and only served to swell the aggregate of many humiliating 
particulars.' She grew so embittered over her grievances 
that Lord Beaconsfield says ' she lived till eighty without 
indulging a tender expression ; ' and must have been an 
unpleasant figure in her grandson's childish recollections. 
The father did his best to keep the peace, but had nothing 
to offer but good-natured commonplaces. Isaac at last ran 
away from home, and was brought back after being found 
lying on a tombstone in Hackney Churchyard. His father 
' embraced him, gave him a pony,' and sent him to a day 
§chopl, where he had teniporary peace- But th§ reproaches 



ISAAC DISRAELI 9 

and upbraidings recommenced when he returned in the 
evenings. To crown all, Isaac was delivered of a poem, 
and for the first time the head of the family was seriously 
alarmed. Hitherto he had supposed that boys would be 
boys, and their follies ought not to be too seriously noticed ; 
but a poem was a more dangerous symptom ; ' the loss of 
his argosies could not have filled him with a more blank 
dismay.' 

The too imaginative youth was despatched to a counting- 
house in Holland. His father went occasionally to see him, 
but left him for several years to drudge over ledgers with- 
out once coming home, in the hope that in this way, if in 
no other, the evil spirit might be exorcised. Had it been 
necessary for Isaac Disraeli to earn his own bread the 
experiment might have succeeded. His nature was gentle 
and amiable, and though he could not be driven he might 
have been led. But he knew that he was the only child 
of a wealthy parent. Why should he do violence to his 
disposition and make himself unnecessarily miserable ? 
Instead of book-keeping he read Bayle and Voltaire. He 
was swept into Rousseauism and imagined himself another 
Emile. When recalled home at last the boy had become 
a young man. He had pictured to himself a passionate 
scene in which he was to fly into his mother's arms, and 
their hearts were to rush together in tears of a recovered 
affection. ' When he entered, his strange appearance, his 
gaunt figure, his excited manner, his long hair, and his 
unfashionable costume only filled her with a sentiment of 
tender aversion. She broke into derisive laughter, and 
noticing his intolerable garments reluctantly lent him her 
cheek.' The result, of course, was a renewal of household 
misery. His father assured him that his parents desired 



10 LORD BEACONSFIELD 

only to make him happy, and proposed to estabhsh him 
in business at Bordeaux. He repHed that he had written 
another poem against commerce, 'which was the corrup- 
tion of man,' and that he meant to pubhsh it. What was 
to be done with such a lad ? ' With a home that ought 
to have been happy,' says I^ord Beaconsfield, ' surrounded 
with more than comfort, with the most good-natured 
father in the world and an agreeable man, and v/ith a 
mother whose strong intellect under ordinary circumstances 
might have been of great importance to him, my father, 
though himself of a very sweet disposition, was most 
unhappy.' To keep him at home was worse than useless. 
He was sent abroad again, but on his own terms. He went 
to Paris, made literary acquaintance, studied in libraries, 
and remained till the eve of the Revolution amidst the 
intellectual and social excitement which preceded the 
general convulsion. But his better sense rebelled against 
the Rousseau enthusiasm. Paris ceasing to be a safe 
residence, he came home once more, recovered from the 
dangerous form of his disorder, ' with some knowledge of 
the world and much of books.' 

His aversion to the counting-house was, however, as 
pronounced as ever. Benjamin Disraeli resigned himself 
to the inevitable — wound up his affairs and retired, as has 
been said, upon the fortune which he had realised. Isaac, 
assured of independence, if not of great wealth, went his 
own way ; published a satire, which the old man overlived 
without a catastrophe, and entered the literary world of 
London. Before he was thirty he brought out his 
' Curiosities of Literature,' which stepped at once into 
popularity and gave him a name. He wrote verses which 
were pretty and graceful, verses which were read and 



ISAAC DISRAELI II 

remembered by Sir Walter Scott, and were at least better 
than his son's. But he was too modest to overrate their 
value. He knew that poetry, unless it be the best of its 
kind, is better unproduced, and withdrev/ within the limits 
where he was conscious that he could excel. ' The poetical 
temperament was not thrown away upon him. Because he 
was a poet he was a popular writer, and made belles-lettres 
charming to the multitude. . . . His destiny was to give 
his country a series of works illustrative of its literary and 
political history, full of new information and new views 
which time has ratified as just.' 



13 LORD BEACONSFIELD 



CHAPTER II 

Family of Isaac Disraeli — Life in London— Birth of his Children — 
Abandons Judaism and joins the Church of England— Education of 
Benjamin Disraeli— School Days — Picture of them in 'Vivian 
Grey' and ' Contarini Fleming' — Self-education at Home— Early 
Ambition. 

Isaac Disraeli, having the advantage of a good fortune, 
escaped the embarrassments which attend a strugghng 
hterary career. His circumstances were easy. He became 
intimate with distinguished men ; and his experiences in 
Paris had widened and hberalised his mind. His creed sate 
light upon him, but as long as his father lived he remained 
nominally in the communion in which he was born. He 
married happily a Jewish lady, Maria, daughter of Mr. 
George Basevi, of Brighton, a gentle, sweet-tempered, affec- 
tionate woman. To her he relinquished the management 
of his worldly affairs, and divided his time between his own 
splendid library, the shops of book collectors or the British 
Museum, and the brilliant society of poHticians and men of 
letters. His domestic life was unruffled by the storms which 
had disturbed his boyhood ; a household more affectionately 
united was scarcely to be found within the four seas. Four 
children were born to him — the eldest a daughter, Sarah, 
whose gifts and accomplishments would have raised her, had 
she been a man, into fame ; Benjamin, the Prim? Minister 



BIRTH AND EDUCATION I3 

that was to be, and two other boys, Ralph and James. The 
Disraelis lived in London, but changed their residence more 
than once. At the outset of their married Hfe they had 
chambers in the Adelphi. From thence they removed to 
the King's Road, Gray's Inn, and there, on December 21, 
1804, Benjamin was born. He was received into the Jewish 
Church with the usual rites, the record of the initiation 
being preserved in the register of the Spanish and Portu- 
guese synagogue Bevis Marks. No soothsayer having 
foretold his future eminence, he was left to grow up much 
like other children. He was his mother's darling, and was 
naturally spoilt. He was unruly, and a noisy boy at home 
perhaps disturbed his father's serenity. At an early age it 
was decided that he must go to school, but where it was not 
easy to decide. English boys were rough and prejudiced, 
and a Jewish lad would be likely to have a hard time among 
them. No friend of Isaac Disraeli, who knew what English 
public schools were then like, would have recommended him 
to commit his lad to the rude treatment which he would 
encounter at Eton or Winchester. A private establishment 
of a smaller kind had to be tried as preliminary. 

Disraeli's first introduction to life was at a Mr. Poticary's, 
at Blackheath, where he remained for several years — till he 
was too old to be left there, and till a very considerable 
change took place in the circumstances of the family. In 
18 1 7 the grandfather died. Isaac Disraeli succeeded to 
his fortune, removed from Gray's Inn Road, and took a 
larger house — No. 6 Bloomsbury Square, then a favourite 
situation for leading lawyers and men of business. A more 
important step was his formal withdrawal from the Jewish 
congregation. The reasons for it, as given by himself in his 
* Genius of Judaism,' were the narrowness of the system, the 



14 LORD BEACONSFIELD 

insistence that the Law was of perpetual obHgation, while 
circumstances changed and laws failed of their objects. ' The 
inventions,' he says, 'of the Talmudical doctors, incorporated 
in their ceremonies, have bound them hand and foot, and 
cast them into the caverns of the lone and sullen genius of 
rabbinical Judaism, cutting them off from the great family 
of mankind and perpetuating their sorrow and their shame.' 
The explanation is sufficient, but the resolution was pro- 
bably of older date. The coincidence between the date of 
his father's death and his own secession points to a connec- 
tion between the two events. His mother's impatience of 
her Jewish fetters must naturally have left a mark on his 
mind, and having no belief himself in the system, he must 
have wished to relieve his children of the disabilities and in- 
conveniences which attached to them as members of the 
synagogue. At all events at this period he followed the 
example of his Spanish ancestors in merging himself and 
them in the general population of his adopted country. The 
entire household became members of the Church of Eng- 
land. The children read their Prayer Books and learned 
their catechisms. On July 31 in that year Benjamin Dis- 
raeli was baptised at St. Andrew's Church, Holborn, having 
for his godfather his father's intimate friend the distin- 
guished Sharon Turner. 

The education problem was thus simplified, but not 
entirely solved. The instruction at Mr. Poticary's was in- 
different. ' Ben ' had learnt little there. The Latin and 
Greek w^ere all behindhand, and of grammar, which in those 
days was taught tolerably effectively in good English schools, 
he had brought away next to nothing. But he was quick, 
clever, impetuous. At home he was surrounded with books, 
and had read for himself with miscellaneous voracity. In 



SCHOOL LIFE I 5 

general knowledge and thought he was far beyond his age. 
His father's wish was to give him the best education pos- 
sible — to send him to Eton, and then to a university. His 
mother believed that a public school was a place where 
boys were roasted alive. ' Ben ' was strong and daring, 
and might be trusted to take care of himself. The 
objections, however, notwithstanding the removal of the 
religious difficulty, were still considerable. The character 
of a public school is more determined by the boys than by 
the masters. There were no institutions where prejudice 
had freer play at the beginning of the present century. The 
nationality of a Disraeli could neither be concealed nor 
forgotten, and though he might be called a Christian, and 
though he might be ready to return blow for blow if he 
was insulted or ill-used, it is not likely that at either one of 
our great public foundations he would have met with any 
tolerable reception. He would himself have willingly run 
the risk, and regretted afterwards, perhaps, that he had no 
share in the bright Eton life which he describes so vividly in 
' Coningsby.' It was decided otherwise. The school chosen 
foiv him was at Walthamstow. The master was a Dr. Cogan, 
a Unitarian. There were many boys there, sons most of them 
of rich parents ; but the society at a Unitarian school seventy 
years ago could not have been distinguished for birth or 
good breeding. Neither ' Vivian Grey ' nor ' Contarini 
Fleming ' can be trusted literally for autobiographical details ; 
but Disraeli has identified himself with Contarini in assigning 
to him many of his own personal experiences, and Vivian has 
been always acknowledged as a portrait sketched from a 
looking-glass. In both these novels there are pictures of 
the hero's school days, so like in their general features 
that they may be taken as a fair account of Disraeli's own 



l6 LORD BEAC!ONSFi£lD 



/ f 



recollections. He was fifteen when he went to WalthahiStow, 
and was then beyond the age when most boys begin their 
school career. 

' For the first time in my life,' says Contarini, ' I was 
surrounded by struggling and excited beings. Joy, hope, 
sorrow, ambition, craft, dulness, courage, cowardice, bene- 
ficence, awkwardness, grace, avarice, generosity, wealth, 
poverty, beauty, hideousness, tyranny, suffering, hypocrisy, 
tricks, love, hatred, energy, inertness, they w^re all there and 
sounded and moved and acted about me. Light laughs and 
bitter cries and deep imprecations, and the deeds of the 
friendly, the prodigal, and the tyrant, the exploits of the 
brave, the graceful, and the gay, and the flying words of 
native wit and the pompous sentences of acquired know- 
ledge, how new, how exciting, how wonderful ! ' 

Contarini is Disraeli thus launched into a school epitome 
of the world after the Unitarian pattern. It was a poor 
substitute for Eton. The young Disraeli soon asserted 
his superiority. He made enemies, he made friends, at 
all events he distinguished himself from his comrades. 
School work did not interest him, and he paid but 
slight attention to it. He wanted ideas, and he was given 
what seemed to him to be but words. He lost the oppor- 
tunity of becoming an exact scholar. On the other hand 
in thought, in imagination, in general attainments, he w^as 
superior to everyone about him, masters included. Superio- 
rity begets jealousy. Boys never pardon a comrade who is 
unlike themselves. He was taunted with his birth, as it 
was inevitable that he would be. As inevitably he resented 
the insult. Contarini Fleming and Vivian Grey both fight 
and thrash the biggest boy in their school. The incident in 
the novels is evidently taken from the writer's experience. 



EDUCATION AT HOME 1/ 

Disraeli was a fighter from his youth, with his fist first, as 
with his tongue afterwards. It was characteristic of him 
that he had studied the art of self-defence, and was easily 
able to protect himself. But both his heroes were un- 
popular, and it may be inferred that he was not popular any 
more than they. The school experiment was not a success 
and came to an abrupt end. Vivian Grey was expelled ; 
Contarini left of his own accord, because he learnt nothing 
which he thought would be of use to him, and because he 
' detested school more than he ever abhorred the world in 
the darkest moment of experienced manhood.' The pre- 
cise circumstances under which Disraeli himself made his 
exit are not known to me, but his stay at Walthamstow 
was a brief one, and he left to complete his education 
at home. His father, recollecting the troubles of his own 
youth, abstained from rebukes or reproaches, left him to 
himself, helped him when he could, and now and then, 
if we may identify him with Vivian, gave him shrewd and 
useful advice. Disraeli wanted no spurring. He worked 
for twelve hours a day, conscious that he had singular 
powers and passionately ambitious to make use of them. 
He was absolutely free from the loose habits so common in 
the years between boyhood and youth ; his father had no 
fault to find with his conduct, which he admitted had been 
absolutely correct. The anxiety was of another kind. He 
did not wish to interfere with his son's direction of himself, 
but warned him, very wisely, ' not to consider himself a 
peculiar boy.' ' Take the advice,' said Mr. Grey to Vivian, 
' of one who has committed as many — aye, more — follies than 
yourself. Try to ascertain what may be the chief objects of 
your existence in this world. I want you to take no theolo- 
gical dogmas for granted, nor to satisfy your doubts by 

c 



1 8 LORD BEACONSFIELD 

ceasing to think; but whether we are in this world in a 
state of probation for another, or whether at death we cease 
altogether, human feelings tell me that we have some duties 
to perform to our fellow-creatures, to our friends, and to 
ourselves.' 

Disraeli's conception of himself was that he had it in 
him to be a great man, and that the end of his existence 
was to make himself a great man. With his father's example 
before him literature appeared the readiest road. Contarini 
when a boy wrote romances and threw them into the river, 
and composed pages of satire or sentiment ' and grew 
intoxicated with his own eloquence.' He pondered over 
the music of language, studied the cultivation of sweet 
words, and constructed elaborate sentences in lonely 
walks, and passed his days in constant struggle to qualify 
himself for the part which he was determined to play in 
the game of life. Boyish pursuits and amusements had 
no interest for him. In athletic games he excelled if 
he chose to exert himself, but he rarely did choose unless 
it was in the science of self-defence. He rode well and 
hard, for the motion stimulated his spirits ; but in galloping 
across the country he was charging in imagination the brooks 
and fences in the way of his more ambitious career, 
u This was one side of him in those early years ; another 
was equally remarkable. He intended to excel among his 
fellow-creatures, and to understand what men and women 
were like was as important to him as to understand books. 
The reputation of Vivian Grey's father— in other words, 
his own father — had always made him an honoured guest 
in the great world. For this reason he had been anxious 
that his son should be as little at home as possible, for 
he feared for a youth the fascination of London society. 



THE YOUNG DISRAELI I9 

This particular society was v/hat Disraeli was most 
anxious to study, and was in less danger from it than his 
father fancied. He was handsome, audacious, and readily 
made his way into the circle of the family acquaintances. 
' Contarini was a graceful, lively lad, with enough of 
dandyism to prevent him from committing gaucheries^ and 
with a devil of a tongue.' ' He was never at a loss for 
a compliment or a repartee,' and 'was absolutely unchecked 
by foolish modesty.' 'The nervous vapidity of my first 
rattle,' says the alter ego Vivian, ' soon subsided into 
a continuous flow of easy nonsense. Impertinent and 
flippant, I was universally hailed as an original and a wit. 
I became one of the most affected, conceited, and intoler- 
able atoms that ever peopled the sunbeam of society.' 
The purpose which lay behind Disraeli's frivolous outside 
was as little suspected by those who saw him in the world 
as the energy with which he was always working in his 
laborious hours. The stripling of seventeen was the same 
person as the statesman of seventy, with this difference only, 
that the affectation which was natural in the boy was itself 
aflfected in the matured pohtician, whom it served well as a 
mask or as a suit of impenetrable armour. 



c 2 



20 LORD BEACONSFIELD 



CHAPTER III 

The Austen Family — Choice of a Profession — Restlessness— Enters a 
Solicitor's Office — ' Vivian Grey ' — Illness — Travels Abroad — 
Migration of the Disraelis to Bradenham — Literary Satires — ' Popa- 
nilla' — Tour in the East — Gibraltar — Cadiz — Seville — Mountain 
Adventures — Improved Health — Malta — James Clay — Greece — 
Yanina — Redshid Pasha — Athens — Constantinople — Plains of Troy 
and Revolutionary Epic— Jaffa — Jerusalem — Egypt — Home Letters 
- — Death of William Meredith — Return to England. 

In the neighbourhood of the square in which the Disraelis 
now resided there Hved a family named Austen, with whom 
the young Benjamin became closely intimate. Mr. Austen 
was a solicitor in large practice ; his wife was the daughter 
of a Northamptonshire country gentleman — still beautiful, 
though she had been for some years married, a brilliant 
conversationalist, a fine musician, and an amateur artist of 
considerable power. The house of this lady was the gather- 
ing-place of the young men of talent of the age. She early 
recognised the unusual character of her friend's boy. She 
invited him to her salons, talked to him, advised and helped 
him. A writer in the 'Quarterly Review' (January 1889), 
apparently a connection of the Austens, remembers having 
been taken by them as a child to call on the Disraelis. 
'Ben,' then perhaps a school-boy returned for the holidays, 
was sent for, and appeared in his shirt-sleeves with boxing 
gloves/ His future destination was still uncertain. Isar.c 



DREAMS AND AMBITIONS 21 

Disraeli, who had no great behef in youthful genius, disen- 
couraged his 'jiterary ambition, and was anxious to see him 
travelling along one of the beaten roads. Mr. Austen 
was probably of the same opinion. ' Ben's ' own views on 
this momentous subject are not likely to have been much 
caricatured in the meditations of Vivian Grey. 

' The Bar ! — pooh ! Law and bad jokes till we are forty, 
and then with the most brilliant success the prospect of 
gout and a coronet. Besides, to succeed as an advocate I 
must be a great lawyer, and to be a great lawyer I must 
give up my chances of being a great man. The " services " 
in war time are fit only for desperadoes (and that truly am 
I), and in peace are fit only for fools. The Church is more 
rational. I should certainly like to act Wolsey, but the 
thousand and one chances are against me, and my destiny 
should not be a chance.' Practical always Disraeli was, 
bent simply on making his way, and his way to a great 
position. No ignes fatui were likely to mislead him into 
spiritual morasses, no love-sick dreams to send him 
wandering after imaginary Paradises. He was as shrewd 
as he was ambitious, and he took an early measure of his 
special capabilities. ' Beware,' his father had said to him, 
' of trying to be a great man in a hurry.' His weakness 
was impatience. He could not bear to w^ait. Byron 
had blazed like a new star at five-and-twenty ; why not 
he ? Pitt had been Prime Minister at a still earlier age, 
and of all young Disraeli's studies political history had 
been the most interesting to him. But to rise in politics 
he must get into Parliament, and the aristocrats who 
condescended to dine in Bloomsbury Square, and to laugh 
at his impertinence, were not likely to promise him a pocket 
borough. His father could not afford to buy him one, nor 



22 LORD BEACONSFIELD 

would have consented to squander money on so wild a 
prospect. He saw that to advance he must depend upon 
himself and must make his way into some financially 
independent position. While chafing at the necessity he 
rationally folded his wings, and on November i8, 1821, when 
just seventeen, he was introduced into a solicitor's office 
in Old Jewry. Mr. Maples, a member of the firm, was an 
old friend of Isaac Disraeli, and to Mr. Maples's department 
' Ben' was attached. Distasteful as the occupation must have 
been to him, he attached himself zealously to his work. 
He remained at his desk for three years, and Mr. Maples 
described him as ' most assiduous in his attention to busi- 
ness, as showing great ability in the transaction of it,' and as 
likely, if allowed to go to the Bar, to attain to eminence 
there. 

If the project had been carried out the anticipation 
would probably have been verified. The qualities which 
enabled Disraeli to rise in the House of Commons would 
have lifted him as surely, and perhaps as rapidly, into the 
high places of the profession. He might have entered Parlia- 
ment with greater facility and with firmer ground under his 
feet. He acquiesced in his father's wishes ; he was entered at 
Lincoln's Inn, and apparently intended to pursue a legal 
career; but the Fates or his own adventurousness ordered 
his fortunes otherwise. His work in the office had not 
interfered with his social engagements. He met distin- 
guished people at his father's table — Wilson Croker, then 
Secretary to the Admiralty ; Samuel Rogers ; John Murray, 
the proprietor of the 'Quarterly Review,' and others of 
Murray's brilliant contributors. The Catholic question was 
stirring. There were rumours of Reform, and the political 
atmosphere was grov/ing hot, Disraeli observed, listened, 



'VIVIAN grey' 25 

took the measure of these men, and thought he was as 
good as any of them. He began to write in the news-- 
papers. The experienced Mr. Murray took notice of him 
as a person of wiiom something considerable might be 
made. These acquaintances enabled him to extend his 
knowledge of the world, which began to shape itself into 
form and figure. To understand the serious side of things 
requires a matured faculty. The ridiculous is caught 
more easily. With Mrs. Austen for an adviser, and 
perhaps with her assistance, he composed a book which, 
however absurd in its plot and glaring in its affectation, 
revealed at once that a new writer had started into being, 
who would make his mark on men and things. That a 
solicitor's clerk of twenty should be able to produce ' Vivian 
Grey ' is not, perhaps, more astonishing than that Dickens, • 
at little more than the same age, should have written 
' Pickwick.' All depends on the eye. Most of us encounter 
every day materials for a comedy if we could only see them. 
But genius is wanted for it, and the thing, when accom- 
plished, proves that genius has been at work. 

The motto of Vivian Grey was sufificiently impudent : 

Why, then, the world's mine oyster, 
Which with my sword I'll open. 

The central figure is the author himself caricaturing his 
own impertinence and bringing on his head deserved retri- 
bution ; but the sarcasm, the strength of hand, the 
audacious personalities caught the attention of the public, 
and gave him at once the notoriety which he desired. 
' Vivian ' was the book of the season ; everyone read it, 
everyone talked about it, and keys were published of the 
characters who were satirised. Disraeli, like Byron, went 



24 LORD BEACONSFIELD 

to sleep a nameless youth of twenty-one and woke to find 
himself famous. 

A successful novel may be gratifying to vanity, but it 
is a bad introduction to a learned profession. Attorneys 
prefer barristers who stick to business and do not expatiate 
into literature. A single fault might be overlooked, and 
* Vivian Grey ' be forgotten before its author could put on 
his wig, but a more serious cause interrupted his legal 
progress. He was overtaken by a singular disorder, which 
disabled him from serious work. He had fits of giddiness, 
which he described as like a consciousness of the earth's 
rotation. Once he fell into a trance, from which he did not 
completely recover for a week. He was recommended to 
travel, and the Austens took him abroad with them for a 
summer tour. They went to Paris, to Switzerland, to 
Milan, Venice, Florence, Geneva, and back over Mont 
Cenis into France. His health became better, but was not 
re-established, and he returned to his family still an invalid. 

The ' law ' w^as postponed, but not yet abandoned. In 
a letter to his father, written in 1832, he spoke of his illness 
as having robbed him of five years of life; as if this, and 
this alone, had prevented him from going on with his 
profession. Meanwhile there was a complete change in the 
outward circumstances of the Disraeli household. Isaac 
Disraeli, who ha^ the confirmed habits of a Londoner, 
whose days had been spent in libraries and his evenings in 
literary society, for some reason or other chose to alter the 
entire character of his existence. Like Ferrars in ' Endymion,' 
though not for the same cause, he tore himself away from 
all his associations and withdrew with his wife and children to 
an old manor house in Buckinghamshire, two miles from High 
Wycombe. Bradenham, their new home, is exactly described 



BRADENHAM 25 

in the account which DisraeH gives of the Ferrars's place of 
retirement ; and perhaps their first arrival there and their 
gipsy-like encampment in the old hall, the sense, half- 
realised, that they were being taken away from all their in- 
terests and associations, may equally have been drawn from 
memory. The Disraelis, however, contrived happily enough 
to fit themselves to their new existence. Disraeli all 
through his life delighted in the country and country scenes 
The dilapidated manor house was large and picturesque. 
The land round it was open down, or covered thinly with 
scrub and woods. They had horses and could gallop where 
they pleased. They had their dogs and their farmyard ; 
they made new friends among the tenantry and the 
labourers. Disraeli's head continued to trouble him, but 
the air and the hills gave him his best chance of recovery. 
His father, contented with an occasional lecture, left him to 
himself. He was devoted to his mother and passionately 
attached to his sister. Altogether nothing could be calmer, 
nothing more affectionately peaceful than the two or three 
years which he passed at Bradenham after this migration. 
Though he could not study in London chambers, he could 
read and he could write, and over his writing he worked 
indefatigably, if not with great success. He added a 
second part to 'Vivian Grey.' Clever it could not help 
being, but it had not the flavour of the first. He wrote the 
' Young Duke,' a flashy picture of high society which might 
have passed muster as the ephemeral production of an 
ordinary novelist. Neither of these, however, indicated 
any literary advance, nor did he himself attach any value 
to them. In a happier interval, perhaps, when he had a 
respite from his headaches, he threw ofi" three light satires, 
which, with one exception, are the most brilliant of all his 



26 LORD BEACONSFIELD 

productions. ' Ixion in Heaven ' is taken from the story of 
the King of Thessaly who was carried to Olympus and fell 
in love with the queen of the gods. Disraeli's classical know- 
ledge probably went no farther than Lempriere's Dictionary, 
but Lempriere gave him all that he wanted. The form and 
tone are like Lucian's, and the execution almost as good. 
No characters in real life are more vivid than those which 
he draws of the high-bred divinities at the court of the 
Father of the gods, while the Father himself is George IV. 
Apollo Byron, and the ladies well-known ornaments of the 
circles of the Olympians of May Fair. 

Equally good is the ' Infernal Marriage,' the rape of 
Proserpine and her adventures in her dominions below. 
The wit which we never miss in Disraeli rises here into 
humour which is rare with him, and a deeper current of 
thought can be traced when the Queen of Hell pays a 
visit to Elysium, finding there the few thousand families 
who spend their time in the splendid luxury of absolute 
idleness; high-born, graceful beings without a duty to 
perform, supported by the toil of a million gnomes, and 
after exhausting every form of amusement ready to perish 
of ennui. 

The third fragment, written in these years, which Lord 
Beaconsfield included in his collected works (he probably 
wrote others which are lost in the quicksands of keepsakes 
and annuals) was ' Popanilla,' a satire on the English Consti- 
tution. He has changed his manner from Lucian's to 
Swift's. ' Popanilla ' might have been another venture of 
Mr. Lemuel Gulliver if there had been malice in it. The 
satire of Swift is inspired by hatred and scorn of his race. 
The satire of Disraeli is pleasant, laughing, and good- 
humoured. In all his life he never hated anybody or any- 



POLITICAL SATIRES 2J 

thing, never bore a grudge or remembered a libel against 
himself. Popanilla is a native of an unknown island in an 
unknown part of the Pacific, an island where modern 
civilisation had never penetrated and life was a round of 
ignorant and innocent enjoyment. In an evil hour a strange 
ship is wrecked upon the shore. A box of books is flung 
up upon the sands, books of useful knowledge intended for 
the amelioration of mankind, spiritual, social, moral, and 
political. Popanilla finds it, opens it, and with the help of 
these moral lights sets to work to regenerate his countrymen. 
He makes himself a nuisance, and is sent floating in a 
canoe which carries him to Vray Bleusia, or modern 
England. Being a novelty, he is enthusiastically welcomed, 
becomes a lion, and is introduced to the charms and 
wonders of complicated artificial society. The interest is 
in the light which is thrown on Disraeli's studies of English 
politics. The chapter on ' Fruit ' is a humorously correct 
sketch of the Anglican Church. Mr. Flummery Flura re- 
presents political economy, and the picture of him betra}'*s 
Disraeli's contempt for that once celebrated science, now 
relegated to the exterior planets. ' Popanilla ' can be still 
read with pleasure as a mere w^ork of fancy. It has more 
serious value to the student of Disraeli's character. As a 
man of letters he shows at his best in writings of this kind. 
His interest in the life which he describes in his early 
novels w^as only superficial, and he could not give to others 
what he did not feel. In 'Ixion,' in the ' Infernal Marriage,' 
in ' Popanilla' we have his real mind, and matter, style, and 
manner are equally admirable. 

His future was still undetermined. His father continued 
eager to see him at the Bar, but his health remained delicate 
and his disinclination more and more decided. There was 



28 LORt) BEACONSFIELD 

a thought of buying an estate for him and setting him tip 
as a country gentleman. But to be a small squire was a 
poor object of ambition. He wished to travel, travel especi- 
ally in the East, to which his semi-Asiatic temperament gave 
him a feeling of afifinity. The Holy Land, as the seat of 
his own race, affected his imagination. He had a romantic 
side in his mind in a passion for Jerusalem. His intellect 
had been moulded by the sceptical philosophy of his 
fathers ; but, let sceptics say what they would, a force which 
had gone out from Jerusalem had governed the fate of the 
modern world. 

His desire, when he first made it known, was not 
encouraged. ' My wishes,' he said, ' were knocked on the 
head in a calmer manner than I could have expected from 
my somewhat rapid but too indulgent sire.' He lingered on 
at Bradenham till even his literary work had to end. He 
could not ' write a Hne without effort,' and he wandered 
aimlessly about the woods ; ' solitude and silence ' not 
iraking his existence easy, but at least tolerable. 

The objection to his travelling had been perhaps 
financial. If this was the difficulty it was removed by his 
friends the Austens, who, we are briefly told, came to his 
assistance and enabled him to carry out his purpose. He 
found a companion ready to go with him in Mr. William 
Meredith, a young man of talent and good fortune who 
was engaged to be married to his sister. They started in 
June 1830, and their adventures are related in a series of 
brilliant and charming letters to his family, letters which show 
the young Disraeli no longer in the mythological drapery of 
' Vivian Grey ' and ' Contarini Fleming,' but under his own 
hand as he actually was. Spain was their first object. The 
Disraelis retained their pride in their Spanish descent in a 



FOREIGN TOUR 



29 



dim and distant fashion, and had not forgotten that in right 
of blood they were still Spanish nobles. Steam navigation 
was in its infancy, but small pad die- wheeled vessels ran 
from London to Cork and Dublin, touching at Falmouth, 
from which outward-bound ships took their departure. 
They reached Falmouth with no worse adventure than a 
rough passage, and Disraeli was flattered to find that the 
family fame had so far preceded him. He met a Dr. 
Cornish there, who was full of admiration for 'Vivian Grey,' 
* knows my father's works by heart and thinks our revered 
sire the greatest man that ever lived.' From Gibraltar on 
July I he wrote to his father himself : — 

'The rock is a wonderful place, with a population 
infinitely diversified— Moors with costumes radiant as a 
rainbow in an Eastern melodrama, Jews with gabardines and 
skull caps, Genoese highlanders and Spaniards whose dress 
is as picturesque as those of the sons of Ivor. ... In the 
garrison are all your works, in the merchants' library the 
greater part. Each possesses the copy of another book 
supposed to be written by a member of our family which is 
looked upon at Gibraltar as one of the masterpieces of the 
nineteenth century. At first I apologised and talked of 
youthful blunders and all that, really being ashamed, but 
finding them, to my astonishment, sincere, and fearing they 
were stupid enough to adopt my last opinion, I shifted my 
position just in time, looked very grand, and passed myself 
off for a child of the sun, like the Spaniards in Peru.' 

Government House opened its hospitahties. Sir George 

^ 5 ^ proud, aristocratic, but vigorous old man, was not 

a person likely to find such a pair of travellers particularly 
welcome to him. Disraeli's affectations of dress and man- 
ner approached vulgarity, and Meredith, though a superior 



30 LORD BEACONSFIELD 

person, was equally absurd in this respect. But Disraeli, at 
any rate where he cared to please, never failed to make himself 
liked. Sir George was polite, Lady D. more than polite. 
Though she was old and infirm, ' her eyes were so brilliant 
and so full of moquerie that you forgot her wrinkles.' Of 
course they were welcome guests in the regimental mess- 
rooms, clever young civilians who could talk and were men 
of the world being an agreeable change in the professional 
monotony, though perhaps the visitors mistook to some 
extent the impression which they produced. 

' Tell my mother,' Disraeli wrote, ' that as it is the 
fashion among the dandies of this place (that is, the officers, 
for there are no others) not to wear waistcoats in the 
morning, her new studs come into fine play and maintain 
my reputation for being a great judge of costume, to the 
admiration and envy of many subalterns. I have also the 
fame of being the first who ever passed the Straits with two 
canes, a morning and an evening cane. I change my cane 
on the gun-fire and hope to carry them both on to Cairo. 
It is wonderful the effect those magical wands produce. I 
owe to them even more attention than to being the supposed 
author of — what is it ? I forget.' 

With Gibraltar for head-quarters they made excursions 
into the Spanish territory ; the first through the Sierra 
Nevada, on a route arranged for them by the governor. 
Travelling was dangerous, and accommodation no better 
than at Don Quixote's enchanted castle. The banditti 
were everywhere. Two Englishmen had just arrived from 
Cadiz whom Jose Maria had stopped and rifled on the way. 
The danger was exciting. They set out in the long hot 
days of July, taking a model valet with them. Brunei 
had been all over the world and spoke all languages except 



ADVENTURES IN SPAIN 31 

English. Their baggage was of the sUghtest, not to tempt 
Jose Maria, Disraeh confining himself to 'the red bag' 
which his mother had made for his pistols. 

'We were picturesque enough in our appearance,' he 
wrote. ' Imagine M. and myself on two little Andalusian 
mountain horses with long tails and jennet necks, followed 
by a large beast of burden, with Brunet in white hat and 
slippers, lively, shrivelled, and noisy as a pea dancing upon 
tin ; our Spanish guide, tall and with a dress excessively 
brode and covered with brilliant buttons, walking by the 
side. The air of the mountains, the rising sun, the rising 
appetite, the variety of picturesque persons and things we 
met, and the impending danger made a delightful life, and 
had it not been for the great enemy I should have given 
myself up entirely to the magic of the life. But that 
spoiled all. It is not worse. Sometimes I think it lighter 
about the head, but the palpitation about the heart greatly 
increases ; otherwise my health is wonderful. Never have 
I been better. But what use is this when the end of all 
existence is debarred me ? I say no more upon this melan- 
choly subject, by which I am ever and infinitely depressed, 
and often most so when the world least imagines it. To 
complain is useless and to endure almost impossible.' 

Jose Maria was in everyone's mouth, but the travellers did 
not fall in with him. After a week they were again enjoying 
the hospitalities of Gibraltar. The climate, the exercisa, the 
novelty were all delightful. Disraeli was a child of the sun, 
as he often said of himself. His health mended and his 
spirits rose. He wore his hair in long curls. The women, 
he said, mistook it for a wig, and ' I was obliged to let them 
pull it to satisfy their curiosity.' The Judge Advocate 
buttonholed him. ' I found him a bore and vulgar. 



32 LORD BEACONSFIELD 

Consequently I gave him a lecture upon canes, which made 
him stare, and he has avoided me ever since.' But every- 
one liked Disraeli. 'Wherever I go,' he said, ' I find plenty 
of firiends and plenty of attention.' He had not come to 
Spain to linger in a garrison town. The two friends were 
soon off again for a ride through Andalusia. Cadiz was 
enchanting with its white houses and green jalousies spark- 
ling in the sun ; ' Figaro in every street and Rosina in 
every balcony.' He saw a bull-fight ; he was introduced to 
the Spanish authorities, and conducted himself with Vivian 
Grey-like impudence. ' Fleuriz, the governor of Cadiz,' he 
WTote, ' is a singular brute. The English complain that 
when they are presented to him he bows and says nothing. 
The consul announced me to him as the son of the greatest 
author in England ; the usual reception, however, only 
greeted me. But I, being prepared for the savage, was by 
no means silent, and made him stare for half an hour in 
a most extraordinary manner. He was sitting over some 
prints just arrived from England — a view of Algiers and — 
the fashions for June. The question was whether the place 
was Algiers, for it had no title. I ventured to inform his 
Excellency that it was, and that a group of gentlemen dis- 
playing their extraordinary coats and countenances were 
personages no less eminent than the Dey and his principal 
councillors of State. The dull Fleuriz, after due examination, 
insinuated scepticism, whereupon I offered renewed argu- 
ments to prove the dress to be Moorish. Fleuriz calls a 
young lady to translate the inscription, which proves only 
that they are fashions for June. I add at Algiers. Fleuriz, 
unable to comprehend badinage, gives a Mashallah look of 
pious resignation, and has bowed to the ground every night 
since that he has met me.' 



ADVENTURES IN SPAIN 33 

After Cadiz Seville, and then Malaga. Brigands every- 
where, but not caring to meddle with travellers who had so 
little with them worth plundering. Once only there was 
alarm. ' We saved ourselves by a moonlight scamper and 
a change of road.' An adventure, however, they had at 
Malaga which recalls Washington Irving's story of the inn 
at Terracina, with this difference, that Disraeli and his com- 
panion did not show the gallantry of Irving's English hero. 

' I was invited,' he says, ' by a grand lady of Madrid to 
join her escort to Granada, twenty foot-soldiers armed, and 
tirailleurs in the shape of a dozen muleteers. We refused, 
for reasons too long to detail, and set off alone two hours 
before, expecting an assault. I should tell you we dined 
previously with her and her husband, having agreed to meet 
to discuss matters. It was a truly Gil Bias scene. My 
lord, in an undress uniform, slightly imposing in appearance, 
greeted us with dignity ; the senora young and really very 
pretty, with infinite vivacity and grace. A French valet 
leant on his chair, and a duefia such as Staphenaff would 
draw, broad and supercilious, with jet eyes, mahogany com- 
plexion, and a cocked up nose, stood by my lady bearing a 
large fan. She was most complaisant, as she evidently had 
more confidence in two thick-headed Englishmen with 
their Purdeys and Mantons than in her specimens of the 
once famous Spanish infantry. She did not know that we 
were cowards upon principle. I could screw up my courage 
to a duel in a battle — but ' 

In short, in spite of the lady's charms and their united 
eloquence, Disraeli and Meredith determined to start alone. 
They had learnt that a strong band of brigands were lying 
in wait for the noble pair. They took a cross road, lost 
th^ir way, and slept with pack-saddles for pillows, but reached 

P 



34 LORD BEACONSFIELD 

Granada without an interview with Jose. A fine description 
of Granada and Saracenic architecture was sent home from 
the spot. In return DisraeH requires his sister to ' tell him 
all about Bradenham — about dogs and horses, orchards, 
gardens ; who calls, where you go, who my father sees in 
London, what is said.' ' This is what I want,' he writes j 
* never mind public news. There is no place like Braden- 
ham, and each moment I feel better I want to come back.' 

Affectation, light-heartedness, and warm home feelings 
are strangely mixed in all this ; and no one of his changing 
moods is what might be expected in a pilgrim to Jerusalem, 
in search of spiritual light. But this was Disraeli — a cha- 
racter genuine and affectionate, whose fine gifts were veiled 
in foppery which itself was more than half assumed. His 
real serious feeling comes out prettily in a passage in which 
he sums up his Peninsular experiences. ' Spain is the 
country for adventure. A weak government resolves society 
into its original elements, and robbery becomes more 
honourable than war, inasmuch as the robber is paid and 
the soldier is in arrears. A wonderful ecclesiastical esta- 
blishment covers the land with a privileged class. ... I 
say nothing of their costume. You are wakened from your 
slumbers by the rosario, the singing procession by which 
the peasantry congregate to their labours. It is most 
effective, full of noble chants and melodious responses, that 
break upon the still fresh air and your ever fresher feelings 
in a manner truly magical. Oh, wonderful Spain ! I 
thought enthusiasm was dead within me and nothing could 
be new. I have hit, perhaps, upon the only country which 
could have upset my theory, a country of which I have 
read little and thought nothing.' 

Health was really mending. ' This last fortnight,' he 



MALTA 35 

says, ' I have made regular progress, or rather felt, perhaps, 
the progress which I had already made. It is all the sun — 
not society or change of scene. This, however agreeable, 
is too much for me and ever turns me back. It is when 
I am alone and still that I feel the difference of my system, 
that I miss the old aches and am conscious of the increased 
activity and vitality and expansion of the blood.' 

After Spain Malta was the next halting-place; Malta, 
with its garrison and military society, was Gibraltar over 
again, with only this difference, that Disraeli fell in with a 
London acquaintance there in James Clay, afterwards 
member for Hull and a figure in the House of Commons. 

The arrival of a notoriety was an incident in the 
uniformity of Maltese existence. 'They have been long 
expecting your worship's offspring,' he tells his father, ' so I 
was received with branches of palm.' He accepted his 
honours with easy superiority. ' To govern men,' he said, 
' you must either excel them in their accomplishments or 
despise them. Clay does one, I do the other, and we are 
both equally popular. Affectation here tells better than 
wit. Yesterday at the racket court, sitting in the gallery 
among strangers, the ball entered and lightly struck me and 
fell at my feet. I picked it up, and observing a young rifle- 
man excessively stiff, I humbly requested him to forward its 
passage into the court, as I really had never thrown a ball in 
my life. ... I called on the Governor, and he was fortunately 
at home. I flatter myself that he passed through the most 
extraordinary quarter of an hour of his existence. I gave 
him no quarter, and at last made our nonchalant Governor 
roll on the sofa from his risible convulsions. Clay confesses 
my triumph is complete and unrivalled.' 

'I continue much the same,' he reported of himself — 

D 2 . 



36. LORD BEACONSFIELD 

* still infirm but no longer destitute of hope. I wander in 
pursuit of health like the immortal exile in pursuit of that 
lost shore which is now almost glittering in my sight. Five 
years of ray life have been already wasted, and sometimes 
I think my pilgrimage may be as long as that of Ulysses.' 
Like the Greek he was exposed to temptations from the 
Circes and the Sirens, but he understood the symptoms and 

knew where to look for safety. ' There is a Mrs. here 

in Malta,' he writes to Ralph Disraeli, 'with a pretty 
daughter, cum multis aliis ; I am sorry to say, among them 
a beauty very dangerous to the peace of your unhappy 
brother. But no more of that. In a few weeks I shall be 
bounding, and perhaps sea-sick, upon the Egean, and then 
all will be over. Nothing like an emetic in these cases.' 

James Clay was rich, and had provided a yacht in which, 
with the Byronic fever on him, he professed to intend to 
turn corsair. He invited Disraeli and Meredith to join 
him, and they sailed for Corfu in October equipped for 
enterprise. 'You should see me,' he said, 'in the costume 
of a Greek pirate— a blood-red shirt with silver studs as big 
as shillings, an immense scarf for girdle, full of pistols and 
daggers, red cap, red slippers, broad blue-striped jacket and 
trowsers.' ' Adventures are to the adventurous j ' so Lxion 
had written in Athene's album. Albania was in insurrec- 
tion. Unlike Byron, whom he was supposed to imitate 
Disraeli preferred the Turks to the Greeks whom he 
despised, and thought for a moment of joining Redshid's 
army as a volunteer, to see what war was like. When they 
reached Corfu the rebellion was already crushed, but 
Redshid was still at Yanina, the Albanian capital, and he 
decided at least to pay the Grand Vizier a visit. The yacht 
took them to Salora. There they landed, and proceeded 



ALBANIAN RIDE " 37 

through the mountains with a handful of horse for an escort. 
They halted the first night at Arta, ' a beautiful town now 
in ruins.' ' Here,' he said, ' for the first time I reposed 
upon a divan, and for the first time heard a muezzin from 
a minaret.' In the morning they waited on the Turkish 
governor. 'I cannot describe to you,' he wrote in a 
humorous description of his interview, 'the awe with 
which I first entered the divan of a great Turk, and the 
curious feeling with which I found myself squatting on the 
right hand of a bey, smoking an amber-mouthed chibouque, 
drinking coffee, and paying him compliments through an 
interpreter.' 

The Turks had been kind to his own race at a time 
when Jews had no other friends, and from the first Disraeli 
had an evident liking for them. They set out again after 
a few hours. ' We journeyed over a wild mountain pass,' 
the diary continues, ' a range of ancient Pindus, and before 
sunset we found ourselves at a vast but dilapidated khan 
as big as a Gothic castle, situated on a high range, built as 
a sort of half-way house for travellers by Ali Pasha, now 
turned into a military post.' They were received by a bey, 
who provided quarters for them. They were ravenously 
hungry ; but the bey could not understand their language, 
nor they his. He oftered them wine ; they produced brandy, 
and communication was thus established. ' The bey drank 
all the brandy ; the room turned round ; the wild attendants 
who sat at our feet seemed dancing in strange and fantastic 
whirls. The bey shook hands with me ; he shouted English, 
I Greek. "Very good," he had caught up from us. " Kalo, 
kalo," was my rejoinder. He roared ; I smacked him on the 
back. I remember no more. In the middle of the night 
I woke, found a flagon of water, and drank a gallon at a 



38 LORD BEACONSFIELD 

draught. I looked at the wood fire and thought of the blazing 
blocks in the hall at Bradenham ; asked myself whether I 
was indeed in the mountain fortress of an Albanian chief, 
and shrugging my shoulders went to bed and woke without 
a headache. We left our jolly host with regret. I gave 
him my pipe as a memorial of our having got tipsy 
together.' 

At Yanina they found the Turkish army quartered in 
the ruins of the town. The Grand Vizier occupied the 
castle with the double dignity of a prince and a general 
He was surrounded with state, and they were made to wait 
ten minutes before they could be admitted to his presence. 

' Suddenly we are summoned to the awful presence ot 
the pillar of the Turkish Empire, the renowned Redshid ; 
an approved warrior, a consummate politician, unrivalled as 
a dissembler in a country where dissimulation is part of 
the moral culture. . . . The hall was vast, covered with 
gilding and arabesques. . . . Here, squatted up in a corner 
of a large divan, I bowed with all the nonchalance of 
St. James's Street to a little ferocious -looking, shrivelled, 
careworn man, plainly dressed, with a brow covered with 
WTinkles and a countenance clouded with anxiety and 
thought. ... I seated myself on the divan of the Grand 
Vizier, who, the Austrian consul observed, " had destroyed 
in the course of the last three months, not in war, upwards 
of 4,000 of my acquaintance," with the self-possession of 
a morning call. Some compliments passed between us. 
Pipes and coffee were brought. Then his Highness waved 
his hand, and in an instant the chambers were cleared. 
Our conversation I need not repeat. We congratulated him 
on the pacification of Albania. He rejoined that the peace 
of the world was his only object and the happiness of man- 



YANINA 39 

jkind his only wish. This went on for the usual time. He 
asked us no questions about ourselves or our country, as the 
other Turks did, but seemed quite overwhelmed with busi- 
ness, moody and anxious. While we were with him three 
separate Tartars arrived with despatches. What a life ! . . . 
I forgot to tell you that with the united assistance of my 
Enghsh, Spanish, and fancy wardrobe I sported a costume 
in Yanina which produced a most extraordinary effect on 
that costume-loving people. A great many Turks called on 
purpose to see it. " Questo vestito Inglese, o di fantasia ? " 
asked a little Greek physician. I oracularly replied, "Inglese 
e fantastico." ' 

Had the Greek physician enquired not about the vestito^ 
but about the wearer of it, the answer might have been the 
same. 

The account of this visit to Yanina was composed after 
the return of the party to the yacht. Here is a description 
in Disraeli's other manner : — 

* 1 write you this from that Ambracian gulf where the 
soft triumvir gained more glory by defeat than attends the 
victory of harsher warriors. The site is not unworthy of the 
beauty of Cleopatra. From the summit of the land the 
gulf appears like a vast lake w^alled in on all sides by moun- 
tains more or less distant. The dying glory of a Grecian 
eve bathes with warm light promontories and gentle bays 
and infinite modulation of purple outline. Before me is 
Olympus, whose austere peak glitters yet in the sun. A 
bend in the land alone hides from me the islands of Ulysses 
and Sappho. When I gaze upon this scene, and remember 
the barbaric splendour and turbulent existence which I 
have just quitted with disgust, I recur to the feelings in the 
indulgence of which I can alone find happiness and from 



40 Lord beaconsfield 

which an inexorable destiny seems resolved to shut me 
out.' 

In a sketch like the present the tour cannot be followed 
minutely. Athens is finely painted, but Disraeli's classical 
education had been too imperfect to enable him to fill with 
figures and incidents the scenes which he was looking upon. 
The golden city was more after his heart. ' It is near sun- 
set,' he wrote on November 20, 'and Constantinople is in 
full sight. It baffles description, though so often described. 
I feel an excitement which I thought dead.' He did 
describe, however, and drew magnificent pictures of the 
towns and palaces, and the motley-coloured crowd which 
thronged the bazaars. Lytton Bulwer was one of his London 
acquaintances. To him he wrote from Constantinople — 

' I confess to you that my Turkish prejudices are very 
much confirmed by my residence in Turkey. The life of 
this people greatly accords with my taste. To repose on 
voluptuous divans and smoke superb pipes, daily to in- 
dulge in the luxury of a bath which requires half a dozen 
attendants for its perfection, to court the air in a carved 
caique by shores which are a perpetual scene, and to find 
no exertion greater than a canter on a barb, this I think a 
more sensible life than the bustle of clubs, the boring of 
drawing-rooms, and the coarse vulgarity of our political con- 
troversies. 

Disraeli's English contemporaries who were aspiring to 
Parliamentary fame, and with whom in a few years he was to 
cross swords, were already learning the ways of the House 
of Commons, or training in subordinate official harness. 
Little would any of those who saw him lounging on divans, 
with a turban on his head and smoking cherry sticks 
longer than himself, have dreamt that here was the man 



The plain of troy '41 

who was to rise above them all and be Prime Minister of 
England. He too was forming himself for something, 
though as yet he could not tell for what. Ambitious visions 
haunted his imagination, even grander than he was ever to 
realise. On their way back through the Dardanelles the 
party paused for a sight of the Plain of Troy. As Disraeli 
stood on the sacred soil and gazed on the grass mound 
which was called the tomb of Patroclus, the thought passed 
through him that as the heroic age had produced its Homer, 
the Augustan era its Virgil, the Renaissance its Dante, the 
Reformation its Milton, why should not the revolutionary 
epoch produce its representative poet ? Why should not 
that poet be himself? Why not but for two reasons ? that 
the modern European revolution is disintegration and not 
growth, the product of man's feebleness, not of his great- 
ness, and therefore no subject for a poem ; and again because 
Disraeli could never learn to detach himself from his work 
and forget the fame with which success was to reward him ; 
and therefore to be a poet was not among the gifts which the 
Fates had in store for him. It was well for him, however, to 
indulge the dream. No man ever rises to greatness in this 
world who does not aim at objects beyond his powers. 

Cyprus followed, and then Jaffa, and from Jaffa they 
crossed the mountains to Jerusalem. Disraeli was not given 
to veneration, but if he venerated anything it was the genius 
and destiny of his own race. Even the Holy City could 
not transport him out of himself, but it affected him more 
than anything which he had ever seen in his life. The 
elaborate but artificial account of his impressions, which is 
to be read in ' Tancred,' is a recollection of what he wrote to 
his sister about twenty years before. 

' From Jaffa, a party of six, well mounted and armed, we 



42 LORD BEACONSFIELD 

departed for Jerusalem, and crossed the plain of Ramie, vast 
and fertile. Ramie — the ancient Arimathea — is the model 
of one's idea of a beautiful Syrian village — all the houses 
isolated and each surrounded by palm trees ; the meadows 
and the exterior of the village covered with olive trees, or 
divided by rich plantations of Indian fig. . . . Next day, at 
length, after crossing a vast hill, we saw the Holy City. I 
will describe it to you from the Mount of Olives. This is a 
high hill, still partially covered with the tree which gives it 
its name. Jerusalem is situated upon an opposite height 
which descends as a steep ravine and forms, with the assist- 
ance of the Mount of Olives, the narrow valley of Jehosa- 
phat, Jerusalem is entirely surrounded by an old feudal 
wall, with towers and gates of the time of the crusaders, and 
in perfect preservation. As the town is built upon a hill 
you can from the opposite height discern the roof of almost 
every house. In the front is the magnificent mosque built 
upon the site of the Temple. A variety of domes and 
towers rise in all directions. The houses are of bright stone. 
I was thunderstruck. I saw before me apparently a gorgeous 
city. Nothing can be conceived more wild and terrible 
and barren than the surrounding scenery, dark, strong, and 
severe ; but the ground is thrown about in such picturesque 
undulation that the mind [being] full of the sublime, not 
the beautiful, rich and waving woods and sparkling cultiva- 
tion would be misplaced. 

' Except Athens I never saw anything more essentially 
striking, no city except that whose sight was so pre-emi- 
nently impressive. I will not place it below the city of 
Minerva. Athens and Jerusalem in their glory must have 
been the first representatives of the beautiful and the sub- 
lime. Jerusalem in its present state would make a wonder- 



JERUSALEM 43 

ful subject for Martin, and a picture from him could alone 
give you an idea of it. 

* This week has been the most delightful of all our travels. 
We dined every day on the roof of a house by moonlight ; 
visited the Holy Sepulchre of course, though avoided the 
other coglionerie. The House of Loretto is probability to 
them. But the Easterns will believe anything. Tombs of 
the Kings very fine. Weather delicious ; mild summer heat. 
Made an immense sensation. Received visits from the Vicar- 
General of the Pope, two Spanish priors, &c. . . . Mr. Briggs, 
the great Egyptian merchant, has written from England to 
say that great attention is to be paid me, because I am the 
son of the celebrated author.' 

The extracts must be cut short. The visit to Jerusalem 
was in February 1831. In April Disraeli was in Egypt, and 
ascended the Nile to Thebes. ' Conceive a feverish and 
tumultuous dream full of triumphial gates, processions of 
paintings, interminable walls of heroic sculpture, granite 
colossi of gods and kings, prodigious obelisks, avenues of 
sphinxes, and halls of a thousand columns thirty feet in girth 
and of proportionate height. My eyes and mind yet ache 
with a grandeur so little in unison with our own littleness. 
The landscape was quite characteristic ; mountains of 
burning sand. Vegetation unnaturally vivid, groves of 
cocoa trees, groups of crocodiles, and an ebony population 
in a state of nudity armed with spears of reeds.' 

Far in the future lay the Suez Canal and the influence 
which the young visitor was one day to exercise over the 
fortunes of Egypt. The tour was over. His health was 
recovered. He was to return to England and take to work 
again, uncertain as yet whether he was not to go back to his 
Coke and Blackstone. His thoughts for the present were 



44 LORD BEACONSFIELD 

turned on Bradenham and its inmates. A chest of Eastern 
armour, pipes, and other curiosities was ready-packed at 
the end of May, to accompany him home for the decora- 
tion of the hall. On May 28 he wrote in high spirits of 
his approaching return : ' I am delighted with my father's 
progress. How I long to be with him, dearest of men, 
flashing our quills together, standing together in our chivalry 
as we will do, now that I have got the use of my brain for 
the first time in my life.' 

These letters from abroad, and the pictures which 
Disraeli draws of himself and of his adventures in them, 
show him as he really was, making no effort to produce an 
effect, in the easy undress of family confidence, not without 
innocent vanities, but light-hearted and gay at one moment, 
at another deeply impressionable with anything which was 
interesting or beautiful. The affectations which so strongly 
characterised his public appearances were but a dress 
deliberately assumed, to be thrown off when he left the 
stage like a theatrical wardrobe. 

The expedition, which had remained so bright to the 
end, unhappily had a tragic close. On the eve of departure 
William Meredith caught the small-pox at Alexandria, and 
died after a few days' illness. His marriage with Sarah 
Disraeli was to have taken place immediately after their 
arrival in England. The loss to her was too deep for 
reparation ; she remained single to her own life's close. To 
Disraeli himself the shock gave ' inexpressible sorrow,' and 
' cast a gloom over him for many years.' 



'CONTARINI FLEMING' 45 



CHAPTER IV 

* Contarini Fleming ' — The Poetical Life — Paternal advice — A Poet, or 
not a Poet ? — ' Revolutionary Epic ' — Favourable verdict — Success 
of the Novels — Disraeli a new^ Star — London Society — Politicals 
ambition — Mrs. Wyndham Lewis — Financial embarrassments — 
Portraits of Disraeli by W. P. Willis — Lady Dufiferin and others 
-— Stands for High Wycombe — Speech at the Red Lion — Tory 
Radicalism — Friendship with Lord Lyndhurst — Self-confidence — 
Vindication of the British Constitution — Conservative Reaction — 
Taunton Election^Crosses swords with O'Connell — The Runny- 
. mede Letters — Admitted into the Carlton Club — ' Henrietta 
Temple ' and ' Venetia.' 

The law had not been finally abandoned — perhaps in 
deference to Isaac Disraeli's continued anxiety on the 
subject. Schemes and projects, however, which had shaped 
themselves in Disraeli's own mind during his travels had to 
be executed first. He brought home with him a brain 
restored ~ to energy, though with saddened spirits. There 
was the ' Revolutionary Epic ' to be written, and an Eastern 
story w^hich was brought out afterwards as the tale of 
' Alroy.' Before undertaking either of them, however, he 
drew a second portrait of himself in ' Contarini Fleming.' 
Vivian Grey was a clever, independent youth, with the world 
before him, with no purpose save to make himself con- 
spicuous. Disraeli now hoped to be a poet, and in ' Con- 
tarini ' his aim, he said, was to trace the development and 
function of the poetic character. The flippancy of ' Vivian ' 



46 LORD BEACONSFIELD 

is gone. The tone is calm, tender, and at times morbid. 
The hero is taken through a series of adventures. He tries 
pohtics, but poHtics do not interest him. He falls in love. 
The lady of his affections dies and leaves him in despair. 
Contarini revives to find a desire, and perhaps a capacity — 
for he cannot be confident that he is not deceiving himself 
— to become the poet which Disraeli was then aspiring to 
make himself. The outward characteristics of that character 
could at least be assumed. Contarini becomes a wanderer 
like Byron, and visits the same scenes from which Disraeli 
had just returned. The book contains passages of striking 
beauty, so striking that Goethe sent praises and com- 
pliments, and Milman, who reviewed it, said it was a work 
in no way inferior to 'Childe Harold,' and equally cal- 
culated to arrest public attention. Yet the story ends in 
nothing. The river loses itself in the sands. Contarini is 
but Disraeli himself in the sick period of undetermined 
energies. He meditates on the great problems of life, and 
arrives at the conclusions adopted almost universally by 
-intellectual men before they have learnt to strike out 
their course and to control circumstances and their own 
nature. 

' I believe in that destiny before which the ancients 
bowed. Modern philosophy has infused into the breast of 
man a spirit of scepticism, but I think that ere long science 
will become again imaginative, and that as we become more 
profound we may also become more credulous. Destiny is 
our will, and our will is nature. The son who inherits the 
organisation of the father will be doomed to the same 
fortunes as his sire, and again the mysterious matter in 
which his ancestors were moulded may in other forms, by 
a necessary attraction, act upon his fate. All is mystery ; 



CHOICE OF A PROFESSION 47 

but he is a slave who will not struggle to penetrate the 
mystery.' 

Such passages as this were not ominous of much success 
in the high functions to which Contarini was aspiring. Much 
more interesting, because more natural, is a dialogue which 
was probably an exact reproductionof a conversation between 
Disraeli and his father. The father of Contarini entirely 
objects to his son's proposed destination of himself. 

' A poet ! ' exclaims the old man. ' What were the great 
poets in their lifetime? The most miserable of their species 
— depressed, doubtful, obscure, or involved in petty quarrels 
and petty persecutions ; often unappreciated, utterly un- 
influential, beggars, flatterers of men, unworthy even of their 
recognition. What a train of disgustful incidents ! what a 
record of degrading circumstances is the life of a great 
poet ! A man of great energies aspires that they should be 
felt in his lifetime ; that his existence should be rendered 
more intensely vital by the constant consciousness of his 
multiplied and multiplying powers. Is posthumous fame a 
substitute for all this ? Try the greatest by this test, and 
what is the result ? Would you rather have been Homer 
or Julius Caesar, Shakespeare or Napoleon ? No one doubts. 
We are active beings, and our sympathy, above all other 
sympathies, is with great actions. Remember that all this 
time I am taking for granted you may be a Homer. Let us 
now recollect that it is perhaps the most impossible incident 
that can occur. The high poetic talent, as if to prove that 
the poet is only at the best a wild, although beautiful, error 
of nature, is the rarest in creation. What you have felt is 
what I have felt myself. Mix in society and I will answer 
for it that you lose your poetic feeling ; for in you, as in the 
great majority, it is not a matter of faculty originating in a 



4$ LORD BEACONSFIELD 

peculiar organisation, but simply the consequence of nervous 
susceptibility that is common to us all.' 

Contarini admits the truth of what his father said, but 
answers that his ambition is great, as if he must find some 
means to satisfy it. He did not think he would find life 
tolerable unless he was in an eminent position, and was 
conscious that he deserved it. Fame, and not posthumous 
fame, was necessary to his felicity. Such a feeling might 
lead to exertion, and on some roads might lead to success ; 
but poetry is a jealous mistress and must be pursued for her 
own sake if her favours are ever to be won. Disraeli would 
not part with his hope till the experiment had been tried. 
He destroyed a tragedy which he had already composed ; 
but he was better satisfied with his ' Revolutionary Epic' 
Three cantos were written, and fifty copies were printed. 
These he resolved to submit to the judgment of his friends. 
If the verdict was unfavourable he would burn his lyre. 

The recitation was at a party at Mrs. Austen's, and a 
scene is thus described which ' was never to be forgotten ' 
by those who witnessed it. ' There was something irresistibly 
comic in the young man dressed in the fantastic cox- 
combical costume that he then affected— velvet coat thrown 
wide open, ruffles on the sleeves, shirt collars turned down 
in Byronic fashion, an elaborate embroidered waistcoat 
from which issued voluminous folds of frill, shoes adorned 
with red rosettes, his black hair pomatumed and elaborately 
curled, and his person redolent with perfume. Standing 
with his back to the fire, he explained the purpose of his 
poem. It was to be to the revolutionary age what the 
' Iliad,' the ' ^neid,' and ' Paradise Lost ' had been to 
their respective epochs. ' He had imagined the genius of 
feudalism and the genius of federation appearing before 



THfi REVOLUTIONARY EPIC 4^ 

the almightly throne and pleading their respective and 
antagonistic causes.' ^ 

With this prelude he recited his first canto. It was not 
without passages sonorous and even grand, but the subject 
itself was hopeless. Disraeli had not yet discerned that 
modern revolution had nothing grand about it, that it w^as 
merely the resolution of society into its component atoms, 
that centuries would have to pass before any new arrange- 
ment possessing worth or dignity would rise out of the ruin. 
The audience was favourably disposed, but when the poet left 
the room a gentleman present declaimed an impromptu bur- 
lesque of the opening lines, which caused infinite merriment 
to those present. Disraeli said afterwards of himself that in his 
life he had tried many things_, and though he had at first failed 
he succeeded at last. This was true ; but poetry was not 
one of these many things. He was wise enough to accept 
the unfavourable verdict, and to recognise that, although his 
ambition was feverish as ever, on this road there were no 
triumphs before him. The dream that he could become a 
great poet was broken. 

His prose writings deserved better and fared better. 
' Contarini Fleming ' and the tale of ' Alroy ' were well 
received. Milman, as was said above, compared ' Contarini ' 
to ' Childe Harold.' Beckford found ' Alroy ' wildly original, 
full of intense thought, awakening, delightful. Both these 
eminent critics were too lavish of their praise, but they 
expressed the general opinion. The fame of ' Vivian Grey ' 
was revived. The literary world acknowledged that a new 
star had appeared, and Disraeli became a London lion. 
The saloons of the great were thrown open to him. 
Bulwer he knew already. At Bulvver's house he was 

' Quarterly Review ^ January 1889, p. 30. 

E 



50 LORD 5EAC0NSFIELD 

introduced to Count d'Orsay, Lady Morgan, Mrs. Norton, 
Mrs. Gore, and other notabilities. Lady Blessington 
welcomed him at Kensington. Flying higher he made 
acquaintance with Lord Mulgrave, Lord William Lennox, 
and Tom Moore. He frequented the fashionable smoking- 
rooms, sporting his Eastern acquirements. s\ distinguished 
colonel, supposing that he meant to push his good fortune^ 
gave him a friendly warning. ' Take care,' my good fellow. 
I lost the most beautiful woman in the world by smoking ; 
it has prevented more liaisons than the dread of a duel or 
Doctors' Commons.' ' You have proved it a very moral 
habit,' replied Disraeli. His ambition did not run in the line 
which the colonel suspected. Success as a novelist might 
gratify vanity, but could never meet Disraeli's aspirations. 
He met public men, and studied the ways of them, dimly 
feeling that theirs was the sphere where he could best 
distinguish himself At a dinner at Lord Eliot's he sat 
next to Peel. 'Peel most gracious,' he reported to his 
sister next day.^ ' He is a very great man indeed, 
and they all seem afraid of him. I observed that he 
attacked his turbot almost entirely with his knife. I could 
conceive that he could be very disagreeable ; but yesterday 
he was in a most condescending humour, and unbent with 
becoming haughtiness. I reminded him by my. dignified 
familiarity both that he was an ex-Minister and I a present 
Radical.' He went to the gallery of the House of Commons, 
'heard Macaulay's best speech, Shiel, and Charles Grant. 
Macaulay admirable, but between ourselves I could floor 
them all. This enfre nous. I was never more confident of 
anything than that I could carry everything before me in 
that House.' In that House, perhaps. He knew that he 

» May 24, 1832, 



POLITICAL AMBITION 5 I 

had a devil of a tongue, that he was clever, ready, without 
fear, and, however vain, without the foolish form of vanity 
which is called modesty. He had .studied politics all his 
life, and having no interests at stake with either of the great 
parties, and, as being half a foreigner, lying outside them 
both, he could take a position of his own. In that House ; 
but, again, how was he to get there ? Young men of genius 
may be invited to dinners in the great world, but seats in 
Parliament will be only found for them if they will put on 
harness and be docile in the shafts. Disraeli had shown no 
qualities which promised official usefulness ; he called himself 
a Radical, but he was a Radical in his own sense of the 
word. He did not talk democratic platitudes, and insisted 
that if he entered Parliament he w^ould enter it independent 
of party ties. Notoriety as a novelist even in these more 
advanced days is no recommendation to a constituency, 
unless backed by money or connection, and of these Disraeli 
had none. 

One chance only seemed to offer. There was a possi- 
bility of a vacancy at High Wycombe, close to his father's 
house. There he was personally known, and there, if the 
opportunity were offered, he intended to try. Meantime 
he extended his London acquaintance, and one friend he 
acquired the importance of whom to his future career he 
little dreamt of. He was introduced by Lytton Bulwer, ' at 
particular desire,' to Mrs. Wyndham Lewis, ' a pretty 
little woman,' he says, ' a flirt and a rattle — indeed, gifted 
with a volubility, I should think, unequalled. She told me 
she liked silent, melancholy men. I answered that I had 
no doubt of it' 

The intimacy with Mrs. Wyndham Lewis was matured, 
and v,'as extended to her husband, a gentleman of large 

E 2 



52 Lord beaconsfield 

fortune and member for Maidstone. Meantime his chief 
associates in London were the set who gathered about 
Lady Blessington, young men of fashion and questionable 
reputation, who were useful to him perhaps as ' studies ' for 
his novels, but otherwise of a value to him less than zero. 
Although he never raced, never gambled, or gave way to 
any kind of dissipation, his habits of life were expensive, 
and his booksj though they sold well, brought him money 
in insufficient quantity. His fashionable impecunious friends 
who wanted loans induced him to introduce them to men 
in the City who knew him, or who knew his connections. 
These persons were ready to make advances if Disraeli 
would give his own name as an additional security. The 
bills, when due, were not paid. Disraeli had to borrow for 
himself to meet them,^ and to borrow afterwards on his own 
account. When he was once involved the second step was 
easy, and this was the beginning of difficulties which at one 
time brought him to the edge of ruin. He was careless, 
however, careless in such matters even to the end of his 
life. His extraordinary confidence in his own powers never 
allowed him to doubt. 

Several sketches of him have been preserved as he 
appeared in these years in the London world. N. P. Willis, 
the American, met him at a party at Lady Blessington's. 

' He was sitting in a window looking on Hyde Park, the 
last rays of sunlight reflected from the gorgeous gold 
flowers of a splendidly embroidered waistcoat. Patent 
leather pumps, a white stick with a black cord and tassel, 
and a quantity of chains about his neck and pockets, 
served to make him a conspicuous object. He has one of 
the most remarkable faces I ever saw. He is lividly pale, 
* This is authentic, though I cannot give my authority. — ^J. A. F. 



DISRAELI IN SOCIETY 53 

and but for the energy of his action and the strength of his 
lungs would seem to be a victim of consumption. His 
eye is black as Erebus, and has the most mocking, lying-in 
wait sort of expression conceivable. His mouth is alive 
with a kind of working and impatient nervousness; and 
when he has burst forth, as he does constantly, with a 
particularly successful cataract of expression, it assumes a 
curl of triumphant scorn that would be worthy of Mephis- 
topheles. His hair is as extraordinary as his taste in 
waistcoats. A thick, heavy mass of jet black ringlets falls 
on his left cheek almost to his collarless stock, w^hich 
on the right temple is parted and put away with the 
smooth carefulness of a girl. The conversation turned on 
Beckford. I might as w^ell attempt to gather up the foam 
of the sea as to convey an idea of the extraordinary Ian-* 
guage in which he clothed his description. He talked like 
a racehorse approaching the winning post, every muscle in 
action.' 

_ JH[is d ress was puxR Osed affe ctation. It led the listener 
to look for only folly from him, and when a brilliant flash 
broke out it was the more startling as being so utterly 
unlooked for from such a figure. Perhaps he overacted his 
extravagance. Lady Dufferin told Mr. Motley that when 
she first met him at a dinner party he wore a black velvet 
coat lined with satin, purple trousers with a gold band 
running down the outside seam, a scarlet waistcoat, long 
lace ruffles falling down to the tips of his fingers, white 
gloves with several brilliant rings outside them, and long 
black ringlets rippling down upon his shoulders. She told 
him that he made a fool of himself by appearing in such 
fantastic shape, never guessing for what reason it had 
tjeen adopted, 



54 LORD BEACONSFIELD 

Here is another picture from Mr. Madden's memoirs of 
Lady Blessington :— ' I frequently met Disraeli at her 
house. Though in general society he was usually silent 
and reserved, he was closely observant. It required 
generally a subject of more than common interest to 
animate and stimulate him into the exercise of his mar- 
vellous powers of conversation. When duly excited, how- 
ever, his command of language was truly wonderful, his 
powers of sarcasm unsurpassed. The readiness of his wit, 
the quickness of his perception, the grasp of his mind, that 
enabled him to seize all the points of any subject under 
discussion, persons would only call in question who had 
never been in his company at the period I refer to.' 

Such was Disraeli when, in the summer of 1832, he 
offered himself as a candidate to the electors of High 
Wycombe. The expected vacancy had occurred. It was 
the last election under the unreformed constituency. 
The voters were only some forty or fifty in number. 
One seat in the borough had been a family property 
of the Whig Carringtons ; the other was under the influence 
of Sir Thomas Baring, whose interest went with the 
Government. Disraeli started as a Radical. He desired 
generally to go into Parliament as a profession, as other 
men go to the Bar, to make his way to consequence 
and to fortune. But he did not mean to take any brief 
which might be offered him. He was infected to some 
extent by the general Reform enthusiasm. Lord Grey's 
measure had taken half their power from the aristo- 
cracy and the landed interest, and had given it to the 
middle classes. There the Whigs desired to stop and to 
put off the hungry multitude (who expected to be better 
clothed and fed and housed) with flash notes on the Bank 



HIGH WYCOMBE 55 

of Liberty. Ardent young men of ability had small belief 
in the virtues of the middle classes. They were thinking 
of a Reform which was to make an end of injustice and 
misery, a remodelling of the world. Carlyle, in the 
Dumfriesshire Highlands, caught the infection, and be- 
lieved for a time in the coming of a new era. Disraeli 
conceived that ' Toryism was vvorn out, and he could 
not condescend to be a Whig.' He started against the 
Carringtons on the line of the enthusiasts, advocating the 
ballot and triennial Parliaments. For cant of all kinds 
he had the natural hatred which belongs to real ability. 
The rights of man to what was called liberty he never 
meddled with. He desired practical results. His dislike 
of the Whigs recommended him to their enemies, and half 
his friends in the borough were Tories. The local news- 
papers supported him as an independent. But help was 
welcome from any quarter but the Whigs. Bulwer, who 
worked hard for him, procured commendatory letters from 
O'Connell, Burdett, and Hume, and these letters were 
placarded ostentatiously in the Wycombe market-place. 

The Government was in alarm for Sir T. Baring's seat ; 
Colonel Grey, Lord Grey's son, was brought down as their 
candidate. Isaac Disraeli seems to have stood aloof and to 
have left his son to his own resources. Disraeli himself did 
not mean to lose for want of displaying himself. He drove 
into Wycombe in an open carriage and four, dressed with 
his usual extravagance — laced shirt, coat with pink lining, 
and the morning cane which had so impressed the Gibraltar 
subalterns. Colonel Grey had arrived on his first visit to 
the borough, and Disraeli seized the opportunity of his 
appearance for an impromptu address. ' All Wycombe was 
assembled,' he wrote, describing the scene. 'Feeling it 



56 LORD BEACONSFIELD 

was the crisis, I jumped upon the portico of the ' Red Lion ' 
and gave it them for an hour and a quarter. I can give you 
no idea of the effect. I made them all mad. A great 
many absolutely cried. I never made so many friends in 
my life, and converted so many enemies. All the women 
are on my side, and wear my colours — pink and white.* 
Colonel Grey told Bulwer that he never heard a finer com- 
mand of words. Wycombe was prouder than ever of its 
brilliant neighbour ; but of course he failed. Hume had 
shaken the Radicals by withdrawing his support before the 
election; Government influence and the Carringtons did 
the rest. Disraeli, however, had made a beginning and 
never let himself be disheartened. 

This election was in June. On August i6 Parliament 

was dissolved, and he offered himself a second time to the 

new constituency. He invited them, in his address, to 

have done with ' political jargon,' to ' make an end of the 

factious slang of Whig and Tory, two names with one 

meaning, and only to delude the people,' and to ' unite in 

forming a great national party.' ' I come before you,' he 

said, ' to oppose this disgusting system of factions ; I come 

forward wearing the badge of no party and the livery of no 

faction. I seek your suffrages as an independent neighbour. 

... I will withhold my support from every Ministry which will 

not originate some great measure to ameliorate the condition 

of the lower orders.' This too was not to serve him. Party 

government may be theoretically absurd when the rivalry is 

extended from measures to men. When the functions of an 

Opposition are not merely to resist what it disapproves, but 

to dethrone the other side, that they may step into its place, 

we have a civil war in the midst of us, and a civil war which 

can neyer end because the strength of the combatants is 



HIGH WYCOMBE 57 

periodically renewed at the hustings. Lord Lyndhurst 
and the Duke of Wellington were by this time interested 
in Disraeli. 

' The Duke and the Chancellor are besetting old Car- 
rington in my favour,' he wrote. 'They say he must yield. 
I am not sanguine, but was recommended to issue the 
address. The Duke wrote a strong letter to the chairman 
of the election committee, saying if Wycombe was not 
ensured something else must be done for Disraeli, as a man 
of his acquirements and reputation must not be thrown 
away. L. showed me the letter, but it is impossible to say 
how things will go. It is impossible for anyone to be 
warmer than the Duke or Lyndhurst, and I ought to say 
the same of Chandos.' 

The Carrington family would not yield ; Disraeli was de- 
feated again, and it became clear that he must look elsewhere 
than to Wycombe. More than one seat might have been 
secured for him if he would have committed himself to a 
side, but he still insisted that if he entered Parliament he 
would enter it unfettered by pledges. There was an ex- 
pected chance at Marylebone. When he proposed himself 
as a candidate he was asked on what he intended to stand. 
' On my head,' he answered. Lyndhurst wished him to 
stand at Lynn as a friend of Lord Chandos. Lord 
Durham offered to return him as a Radical. ' He must be 
a mighty independent personage,' observed Charles Greville, 
when he persisted in the same reply. He realised by degrees 
that he was making himself impossible, but he would not 
yield without a further effort. There was curiosity about 
him, which he perhaps overrated, for he published a pamphlet 
as a self-advertisement, with the title '' What is He ? ' of the 
spue ambitiously neutral tint, His object now was to make 



58 LORD BEACONSFIELD 

himself notorious, and the pamphlet, he said, ' was as much 
a favourite with the Tories as with the Rads.' 

In society he was everywhere, dining with Lyndhurst, 
dining with O'Connell, or at least invited to dine with him, at 
fetes and water parties, at balls and suppers. D'Orsay painted 
his picture. The world would have spoilt him with vanity 
if his self-confidence had not been already so great that it 
would admit of no increase. His debts were growing. He 
had again borrowed for his election expenses. It was hinted 
to him that he might mend his fortune by marriage. 

' Would you like Lady for a sister-in-law ? ' he says in a 

letter to Miss Disraeli. ' Very clever, 25,000/., and domestic' 
' As for love,' he added, ' all my friends who married for 
love and beauty either beat their wives or live apart from 
them. This is literally the case. I may commit many 
follies in life, but I never intend to marry for love, which 
I am sure is a guarantee for infelicity.' 

Whatever might be his faults he was no paltry fortune- 
hunter. He trusted to himself, and only himself. He did 
not sit down upon his disappointments. The press at any 
rate was open to him. He wrote incessantly, 'passing days 
in constant composition.' In the season he was always in 
London ; in the winter either at Bradenham or at some 
quiet place by himself, riding for health and ' living solely 
on snipes.' Determined to be distinguished, he even 
made a show, and not a bad one, in the hunting field. 
Writing from Southend in 1834, he says, 'Hunted the 
other day with Sir H. Smythe's hounds, and though not 
in pink was the best mounted man in the field, riding an 
Arabian mare, which I nearly killed— a run of thirty miles, 
and I stopped at nothing.' 

It was as a politician that he was desiring to keep himself 



O'CONNELL AND THE WHIGS 59 

before men's eyes, if not in Parliament yet as a political 
writer ; his pen was busy with a ' Vindication of the British 
Constitution,' but he meant also to be known for the manly 
qualities which Englishmen respect. 

Public events meantime hastened on. In England after 
each rush in the direction of Liberalism there is always a 
reaction. Within two years of the passing of the Reform 
Bill Lord Grey and his friends had disgusted the Radicals in 
Parliament. The working men, finding that they had been 
fed with chaff instead of corn, had turned to Chartism. The 
Tories closed up their broken ranks. The king dismissed 
the Ministers, and sent to Rome for Peel to take the helm. 
The step itself may have been premature ; but Sir Robert 
was able to take a commanding position before the country, 
and form a party strong enough to hold the Whigs in check 
if too weak to prevent their returning to office. Disraeli, 
though he never much liked Peel, had found by this time 
that there was no place in Parliament for a man who had a 
position to make for himself, unless he joined one party or 
the other. He swallowed his pride, probably on the advice 
of Lyndhurst, with whom he was now on intimate terms. 
The cant of Radicalism was distasteful to him. The Whigs 
were odious. He made up his mind to enlist under Peel. 
In the spring of 1835 Lord Melbourne came back in 
alliance with O'Connell, while the world was ringing with 
the Rathcormack massacre. Thirteen lives had been lost, 
and 'something was to be done' for the pacification of 
Ireland. ' O'Connell is so powerful,' wrote Disraeli, ' that he 
says he will be in the Cabinet. How can the Whigs submit 
to this ? It is the Irish Catholic party that has done all this 
mischief.' O'Connell was not taken into the Cabinet, but 
under the new arrangement would be more powerful than if 



6o LORD BEACONSFIELD 

restrained by office. Disraeli, who had shown in ' Popanilla ' 
what he thought about the Enghsh administration of that 
unfortunate island, had said openly that large changes were 
needed there, but it was another thing to truckle to anarchy 
and threats of rebellion. 

Mr. Labouchere, the member for Taunton, was in the 
new Ministry. Custom required that he should resign his 
seat and be re-elected. Disraeli, supported by the Carlton 
Club, went down to oppose him in the Tory interest. He 
was late in the field. He soon saw that for the present 
occasion at least he must again fail ; but he found 
supporters enough to make it worth his while to fight and 
keep himself conspicuous. ' As to Taunton itself,' he wrote 
in the heat of the conflict,^ ' the enthusiasm of Wycombe 
is a miniature to it, and I believe in point of energy, elo- 
quence, and effect I have far exceeded my former- efforts.' 
He was beaten, though two-thirds of the electors promised 
him their votes on the next opportunity. The Taunton 
election went by, and would have been forgotten like a 
thousand others but for an incident which grew out of it. 
Disraeli desired notoriety, and notoriety he was to have. 
The Irish alliance was not popular in England. Irish 
alliances never are popular when the meaning of them is 
to purchase the support of a disloyal faction, to turn the 
scale in a struggle for power between English parties. Such 
an alliance had been last tried by Strafford and Charles L, 
with unpleasant consequences both to them and to Ireland. 
Now the Whigs were trying the same game — the Whigs, who 
were the heirs of the Long Parliament. The combination of 
English Liberals and Irish Papists was in itself a monstrous 
anomaly. Disraeli had no personal dislike of O'Connell, and 

^ Ap-il 27, 1835. 



Speech at taunton 6t 

had been gi*ateful for his support at Wycombe; but he was 
now retained on the Tory side, and he used the weapons 
which were readiest to his hand. In one of the speeches 
which he thought so successful he had called O'Connell an 
incendiary, and spoke of the Whigs as ' grasping his bloody 
hand.' The Protestant Somersetshire yeomen no doubt 
cheered him to his heart's content. The speech, being 
exceptionally smart, was reported at length and fell under 
O'Connell's eyes. O'Connell was good-natured, but he 
knew Disraeli only as a young politician whom he had 
asked to dinner and had endeavoured to serve. Disraeli 
had gone out of his way to call him bad names, he might 
well have thought ungraciously and ungratefully. He was 
himself the unrivalled master of personal abuse. He saw 
an opening for a bitter joke, and very naturally used it. At 
a public meeting in Dublin he mentioned the part which he 
had taken at Wycombe ; he had been repaid, he said, by an 
atrocity of the foulest description. 

' The miscreant had the audacity to style me an 
incendiary. I was a greater incendiary in 1831 than I am 
at present, if ever I was one, and he is doubly so for having 
employed me. He calls me a traitor ; my answer to this is, 
he is a liar. His life is a living lie. He is the most 
degraded of his species and kind, and England is degraded 
in tolerating and having on the face of her society a 
miscreant of his abominable, foul, and atrocious nature. His 
name shows that he is by descent a Jew. They were once 
the chosen people of God. There were miscreants amongst 
them, however, also, and it must certainly have been from 
one of those that Disraeli descended. He possesses just the 
qualities of the impenitent thief that died upon the cross, 
whose name I verily believe must have been Disraeli. For 



6t LORD BEACONSFIELD 

aught I know the present Disraeh is descended from him, 
and with the impression that he is I now forgive the 
heir at law of the blasphemous thief that died upon the 
cross.' 

All the world shouted with laughter. The hit was good, 
and the provocation, it v\^as generally felt, had been on 
Disraeli's side. But there are limits to license of tongue 
even in political recrimination, and it was felt also that 
O'Connell had transgressed those limits. An insult so keen 
and bitter could be met in one way only. Disraeli had 
already been spattered by the mud which flies so freely in 
English political contests. He had found that ' the only 
way to secure future ease was to take up a proper position 
early in life, and to show that he would not be insulted with 
impunity.' He put himself into the hands of Count d'Orsay. 
D'Orsay considered that a foreigner should not interfere in 
a political duel, and found Disraeli another friend ; but he 
undertook himself the management of the affair. O'Connell 
having once killed an antagonist on an occasion of this kind, 
had ' registered a vow in heaven ' that he would never fight 
again. But Morgan O'Connell had recently fought Lord 
Alvanley in his father's behalf, and was now invited to 
answer for the Dublin speech. If he was to meet every 
person who had suffered from his father's tongue his life 
would have been a short one. He replied that he had 
fought Lord Alvanley because Lord Alvanley had insulted 
his father; he was not accountable for what his father 
might say of other people. Disraeli undertook to obviate 
this difficulty. He addressed O'Connell in a letter 
published in the ' Times,' which, if less pungent, at least 
met Morgan O'Connell's objection. ' Although,' he said, 
' you have placed yourself out of the pale of civilisation I 



O'CONNELL AND DISRAELI 6^ 

am one who will not be insulted even by a yahoo without 
chastising it. ... I admire your scurrilous allusion to my 
origin ; it is clear th€ hereditary bondsman has already for- 
gotten the clank of his fetters. ... I had nothing to appeal 
to but the good sense of the people. No threatening 
skeleton canvassed for me. A death's-head and cross-bones 
were not blazoned on my banners ; my pecuniary resources 
too were limited. I am not one of those public beggars 
that we see swarming with their obtrusive boxes in the 
chapels of your creed, nor am I in possession of a princely 
revenue from a starving race of fanatical slaves.' 

He expected, he said in conclusion, to be a representa- 
tive of the people before the repeal of the Union. ' We 
shall meet at Philippi.' 

Disraeli waited at home till the night of the day on 
which the letter appeared for the effect of his missive. No 
notice being taken of it, ' he dressed and went to the opera.' 
When Peel had challenged O'Connell some years before, the 
police interfered; on this occasion the same thing had hap- 
pened. ' As I was lying in bed this morning,' Disraeli wrote 
on May 9 to his sister, ' the police officers from Marylebone 
rushed into my chamber and took me into custody. I am 
now bound to keep the peace in 500/. sureties — a most 
unnecessary precaution, as if all the O'Connells were to 
challenge me I could not think of meeting them now. The 
general effect is the thing, and that is that all men agree I 
have shown pluck.' 

If Disraeli gained nothing by this encounter he at least 
lost nothing. He was more than ever talked about, and he 
had won approval from a high authority at any rate. ' You 
have no idea,' said Lord Strangford to him, ' of the sensa- 
tion produced at Strathfieldsaye. The Duke said at dinner 

S 



64 LORt) BEACO^SFIELD 

it was the most manly thing done yet.' On one side only his 
outlook was unfavourable. The Taunton election had been 
a fresh expense. He had again to borrow, and his creditors 
became pressing. Judgments were out against him for more 
debts than he could meet. About this time — the date 
cannot be fixed exactly, but the fact is certain — a sheriff's 
officer appeared at Wycombe on the way to Bradenham to 
arrest him. Dr. Rose,^ a medical man in the town, heard 
of the arrival, and sent on an express with a warning ' to 
hide Ben in the well.' Affairs were again smoothed over 
for the moment. 'Ben,' undaunted as ever, worked on 
upon his own lines. He completed his 'Vindication of the 
British Constitution ' — vindication rather of Democratic 
Toryism — amidst the harassing of duns. It was dedicated 
to Lyndhurst, and Lyndhurst paid him a visit at his father's 
house. He had a smart quarrel with the ' Globe ' over a 
revival of the O'Connell business. In the spring of 1836 
appeared the Runnymede letters in the ' Times,' philippics 
against the Whig leaders after the manner of Junius. He 
was elected at the Carlton Club, to his great satisfaction, 
and when the newspapers abused him he quoted a saying 
of Swift, ' that the appearance of a man of genius in the 
world may be always known by the virulence of dunces.' 
To assist his finances a proposal was made to him ' to edit 
the " Arabian Nights " with notes and an additional tale by 
the author of " Vivian Grey." ' He described it as 'a job 
which would not take up more than a month of his time ' 
and by which he might make 'twelve or fifteen hundred 
pounds.' Happily for his literary reputation this adventure 
was not prosecuted. Some one in the City introduced him 

' Father of Sir Philip Rose, who was afterwards Disraeli's 
executor. 



NOVELS AND SPEECHES 6$ 

to a speculation connected with a Dutch loan, which took 
him twice to the Hague and taught him the mysteries of 
finance. More legitimately in the midst of embarrassments 
and platform speeches he wrote ' Henrietta Temple ' and 
'Venetia,' the first a pretty love-story which offered no 
opportunities for his peculiar gifts, the second an attempt to 
exhibit in a novel the characters of Byron and Shelley. 
They would have made a reputation for an ordinary writer. 
They sustained the public interest in Disraeli. Of his 
speeches there was one at Wycombe in which he said that 
there would be no tranquillity in Ireland 'till the Irish 
people enjoyed the right to which the people of all 
countries were entitled, to be maintained by the soil which 
they cultivated with their labour.' In another there is a 
prophetic passage. ' I cannot force from my mind the con- 
viction that a House of Commons concentrating in itself 
the whole powers of the State might — I should say would — 
constitute a despotism of the most formidable and dangerous 
description.' A third was the celebrated Ducrow speech — 
the Whig Premier as Ducrow first riding six horses at once, 
and as they foundered one by one left at last riding a jackass, 
which showed what Disraeli could do as a mob orator when 
he chose to condescend to it. 

Bulwer said of one of these speeches that it was the 
finest in the world, and of one of the novels that it was the 
very worst. The criticism was smartly worded, and on both 
sides exaggerated ; but it was true that, if Disraeli had been 
undistinguished as a speaker, his early novels would have 
been as the ' flowers of the field,' charming for the day that 
was passing over them and then forgotten. His political 
apprenticeship was at last over ; the object of his ambition, 
the so deeply coveted seat in the House of Commons, was 



66 . LORD BEACONSFIELD 

within his reach, and he was to pass into his proper sphere 
— to pass into it too while still 'young, for after all that he 
had done and experienced he was still only thirty-three. 
Few men, with the odds so heavy against them, had risen 
so high in so short a time. 



ELECTED FOR MAIDSTONE 6j 



CHAPTER V 

Returned to Parliament for Maidstone — Takes his place behind Sir R. 
Peel — Maiden speech — Silenced Ly violence — Peel's opinion of 
it— Advice of Shiel — Second speech on Copyright completely 
successful— State of politics — England in a state of change — 
Break-up of ancient institutions — Land and its duties — Political 
Economy and Free Trade — Struggle on the Corn Laws. 

The acquaintance with Mr. and Mrs. Wyndham Lewis 
had grown into a close friendship. Mr. Lewis, as has been 
said, was member for Maidstone, and had large local in- 
fluence in the borough. The death of William IV., in the 
summer of 1837, dissolved Parliament ; and Disraeli, being 
adopted by Mr. Lewis as his colleague, was returned by 
an easy majority. The election again gave the Whigs a 
majority, but not a large one. The tide was fast ebbing, 
and the time was near when the Conservatives, as the 
Tories now called themselves, were to see the balance turn 
in their favour. Lord Melbourne meanwhile remained 
Minister, but a Minister who desired to be able to do nothing. 
Ministers with a powerful party behind them are driven occa- 
sionally into measures which they would have preferred to 
avoid. The electors who have given them power require them 
to use it. Whigs and Tories alike know that their time will 
be short unless by some sensational policy they can gratify 
public expectation. Nothing was expected of Lord Mel- 
bourne, and persons who dreaded change of any kind, from 

F 2 



6B LORD BEACONSFl£LD 

whichever side it might come, were satisfied that it should bS 
so. I remember Bishop Philpotts rubbing his hands over 
the situation, and saying that he hoped never more to see a 
strong Government. 

It was a time of ' slack water ; ' nevertheless Disraeli was 
supremely happy. He had now a career open before him, 
and a career in which he was certain that he could dis- 
tinguish himself. His delight was boyish. He said, ' It 
makes a difference in public opinion of me.' The election 
was in July, and Parliament met in November. He took 
his seat on the second bench behind Peel, a place which 
he intended, if possible, to secure for himself. Peel's 
character had rallied the Conservative party, and to Peel 
personally they looked for guidance. Yarde Buller being 
asked his opinion on some question, replied that Peel 
had not made up his mind ; Old Toryism was gone with 
Lord Eldon ; the Reform Bill, once passed, was to be the 
law of the land. Disraeli had no personal interest in any 
of the great questions which divided Enghsh opinion. He 
owned no land ; he was unconnected with trade ; he had 
none of the hereditary prepossessions of a native English- 
man. He was merely a volunteer on the side with which, 
as a man of intellect, he had most natural sympathy. He 
took a brief from the Conservatives, without remuneration 
in money, but trusting to win fame, if not fortune, in an 
occupation for which he knew that he was qualified. He 
began in the ranks, and Peel was his leader ; and his 
leader, till he had made a place for himself, he loyally pre- 
pared to serve. 

' Peel welcomed me very warmly,' he reported to Bra- 
denham, ' and all noticed his cordial demeanour. He looks 
yery well, and asked me to join a swell dinner at the Carlton 



FINANCIAL EMBARRASSMENTS 69 

on Thursday — a House of Commons dinner purely,' he 
said. ' By that time we shall know something of the temper 
of the House.' A fortnight later he mentioned, with evident 
pride, that he had met Peel again, and Peel took wine with 
him. 

Success to Disraeli in the House of Commons was the 
alternative of a financial catastrophe. His debts were large ; 
money had been necessary to him for the position to which 
he aspired. He had no securities to offer, and never en- 
tangled friends in his pecuniary dealings. He had gone 
frankly to the professional money-lenders, who had made 
advances to him in a speculation upon his success. There 
was no deception on either side — Disraeli was running his 
talents against the chance of failure. If he succeeded the 
loans would be paid. If he did not succeed, the usurers 
had played for a high stake and had lost it, that was all. 
At worst he was but following the example of Burke and 
the younger Pitt. As his bills fell due, they had been 
renewed at 8 and 10 per cent, and even more, and when he 
commenced his political life would have been formidable 
to anyone but himself. They were all eventually paid, 
and he was never charged, even in thought, with having 
abused afterwards the opportunities of power to relieve him- 
self But it was with this weight upon his back that he began 
his Parliamentary career. He had started on his own merits, 
for he had nothing else to recommend him, and he had 
challenged fate by the pretensions which he had put forward 
for himself. His birth was a reproach to be got over. He 
had no great constituency at his back, no popular cause to 
represent. He was without the academic reputation which 
so often smooths the entrance to public life, and the Tory 
gentlemen, among whom he had taken his place, looked upon 



70 LORD BEACONSFIELD 

him with dubious eyes. ' Had I been a political adventurer, 
he said at Wycombe, ' I had nothing to do but join the 
Whigs.' The Radicals would have welcomed him into 
their ranks ; but the Radicals looked on him as an apostate, 
as a mischievous insect to be crushed on the first oppor- 
tunity. The ' Globe ' had assailed him brutally, and he 
had replied in kind. 'The Whig Samson should never 
silence him with the jaw of an ass. He would show the 
world what a miserable poltroon, what a craven dullard, 
what a literary scarecrow, what a mere thing stuffed with 
straw and rubbish was the soi-disant director of public 
opinion and official organ of Whig politics.' A first speech 
in the House of Commons is usually treated with indul- 
gence. The notoriety which Disraeli had brought on him- 
self by these encounters was to make him a solitary 
exception. He had told O'Connell that they would meet 
at Philippi. Three weeks after Disraeli had taken his 
seat there was a debate upon some election manoeuvres in 
Ireland. Hard blows had been exchanged. Sir F. Burdett 
had called O'Connell a paid patriot. O'Connell had repHed 
that he had sacrificed a splendid professional income to 
defend his country's rights. ' Was he for this to be vilified 
and traduced by an old renegade?' Immediately after 
O'Connell Disraeli rose. His appearance was theatrical, 
as usual. He was dressed in a bottle-green frock coat, 
with a white waistcoat, collarless, and with needless dis- 
play of gold chain. His face was lividly pale, his voice 
and manner peculiar. He began naturally and sensibly, 
keeping to the point of the debate. He was cheered by his 
own side, and might have got through tolerably enough ; but 
the gentlemen below the gangway had determined that his 
Philippi should not end with a victory. Of course he did 



MAIDEN SPEECH IN HOUSE OF COMMONS 71 

not yet know the House of Commons. Affected expressions, 
which would have been welcomed at Wycombe or Taunton, 
were received with scornful laughter. He bore it for a time 
good-humouredly, and begged them, to hear him out. He 
was answered with fresh peals of mockery. He had to 
speak of the alliance between the Whigs and the Irish 
Catholics. With a flourish of rhetoric he described Mel- 
bourne as flourishing in one hand the keys of St. Peter, 
in the other, he was going to say, ' the cap of Liberty,' but 
the close of the sentence was drowned in derisive shouts. 
The word had gone out that he was to be put down. Each 
time "that he tried to proceed the storm burst out, and the 
Speaker could not silence it. Peel cheered him repeatedly. 
The Tory party cheered, but to no purpose. At last, finding 
it useless to persist, he said he was not surprised at the recep- 
tion which he had experienced. He had begun several times 
many things and had succeeded at last. Then pausing and 
looking indignantly across the House, he exclaimed in a loud 
and remarkable tone, which startled even the noisy hounds 
who were barking loudest, ' I will sit down now, but the 
time will come when you will hear me.' 

No one suffers long through injustice. His ill-wishers 
had tried to embarrass him and make him break down. 
They had not succeeded, and probably even O'Connell 
himself felt that he had been unfairly dealt with. People 
watched him curiously the rest of the evening to see how 
he bore his treatment. He was said to have sat with his 
arms folded, looking gloomily on the floor. His own 
account sho^vs that he was not depressed at all, and that 
indeed the experience was not entirely new. 

' I made my maiden speech last night,' he tells his sister, 
* rising very late after O'Connell, but at the request of my party 



72 LORD BEACONSFIELD 

and with the full sanction of Sir Robert Peel. I state at 
once that my debut was a failure — not by my breaking down 
or incompetency on my part, but from the physical power 
of my adversaries. It was like my first debut at Aylesbury, 
and perhaps in that sense may be auspicious of ultimate 
triumph in the same scene. I fought through all with 
undaunted pluck and unruffled temper, made occasionally 
good isolated hits when there was silence, and finished with 
spirit when I found a formal display was ineffectual. My 
party backed me well, and no one with more zeal and 
kindness than Peel, cheering me repeatedly, which is not his 
custom. The uproar was all organised by the Rads and the 
Repealers. In the lobby, at the division, Chandos, who was 
not near me in speaking, came up and congratulated me. 
I replied I thought there was no cause for congratulation, 
and muttered " Failure." " No such thing," said Chandos ; 
*' you are quite wrong. I have just seen Peel, and I said 
to him, ' Now tell me exactly what you think of Disraeli.' 
Peel replied, 'Some of my party were disappointed and 
talk of failure ; I say just the reverse. He did all that he 
could under the circumstances ; I say anything but failure : 
he must make his way.' " The Attorney-General (Campbell), 
to whom I never spoke in my life, came up to me in the 
lobby and spoke to me with great cordiality. He said, "Now, 
Mr. Disraeli, could you just tell me how you finished one 
sentence in your speech ? We are anxious to know. ' In one 

hand the keys of St. Peter and in the other ' " " In the 

other the cap of Liberty, Sir John." He smiled and said, " A 
good picture." I replied, " But your friends would not allow 
me to finish my picture." " I assure you," he said, " there 
was the liveliest desire to hear you from us. It was a party 
at the bar, over whom we have no control ; but you hgyg 



CRITICAL OPINIONS 73 

nothing to be afraid of." Now I have told you all. — Yours, 
D., in very good spirits.' 

Disraeli's collapse was the next day's delight at the 
clubs. Shiel, though an Irish leader, declined to join in it. 
' I have heard what you say,' he answered to the wits who 
appealed to him, ' and what is more, I heard this same 
speech of Mr. Disraeli ; and I tell you this : If ever the spirit 
of oratory was in a man it is that man. Nothing can pre- 
vent him from being one of the first speakers of the House 
of Commons.' 

The speech, however, might have been a failure, Shiel 
admitted, if Disraeli had been allowed to go on. The 
manner was unusual ; the House of Commons had not 
grown accustomed to it. ' Get rid of your genius for a session,' 
he said to Disraeli himself. ' Speak often, for you must 
not show yourself cowed, but speak shortly. Be very quiet ; 
try to be dull ; only argue and reason imperfectly. Astonish 
them by speaking on subjects of detail ; quote figures, dates, 
and calculations. In a short time the House will sigh for 
the wit and eloquence they know are in you. They will 
encourage you to pour them forth, and thus you will have 
the ear of the House and be a favourite.' 

Disraeli's sense was stronger than his vanity. His whole 
fate was at stake, and he knew it. He took Shiel's advice. 
A week after he had been howled down he spoke again on 
the Copyright Bill, a subject which he perfectly understood. 
Again when he rose he was observed with curious attention. 
It was thought that he would allude to his first misad- 
venture ; he made not the least reference to it. His voice, 
naturally impressive, was in good condition. What he said 
was exactly to the purpose. His conclusion, if simple, was 
excellent. 



74 LORD BEACONSFIELD 

' I am glad to hear from her Majesty's Government that 
the interests of Hterature have at length engaged their atten- 
tion. It has been the boast of the Whig party, and a boast 
not without foundation, that in many brilliant periods of our 
literary annals they have been the patrons of letters. As 
for myself, I trust that the age of literary patronage has 
passed ; and it will be honourable to the present Government 
if under its auspices it is succeeded by that of literary pro- 
tection.' 

The House was willing to be pleased. Lord John 
Russell cheered the allusion to his Liberal predecessors. 
The Radicals approved of the independence which he 
claimed for the future of his own profession. Peel loudly 
applauded, and never after had Disraeli to complain that he 
was not listened to with respect. The cabal which would 
have silenced him had, in fact, made his reputation. His 
colleague and his Maidstone constituents were delighted. 
In the remainder of the session he was frequently on his 
feet, but only to say a few sensible sentences and never 
putting himself forward on great occasions-] 

Notwithstanding all that has been said and contirmes to 
be said about the outset of his Parliamentary career, he had 
made solid progress in the estimation of the House and, far 
more to the purpose, his quick apprehension had learnt the 
temper and disposition of the House itself. 

Before proceeding further a brief sketch must be given 
of the state of public affairs when Disraeli's political life 
commenced. The British Islands were covered with the 
shells of institutions which no longer answered the pur- 
pose for which they were intended. The privileges 
remained. The duties attaching to them were either 
unperformed or, from change of circumstances, incapable of 



ENGLAND, PAST AND PRESENT 75 

performance. Down to the Reformation of the sixteenth 
century the beliefs and habits of the EngHsh nation were 
formed by the CathoHc Church. Men and women of all 
ranks were brought up on the hypothesis that their business 
in this world was not to grow rich, but to do their duties in 
the state of life to which they had been called. Their time 
on earth was short. In the eternity which lay beyond their 
condition would wholly depend on the way in which it had 
l)een spent. On this principle society was constructed, and 
the conduct, public and private, of the great body of the 
people was governed by the supposition that the principle 
was literally true. 

History takes note of the exception of the foolish or 
tyrannical king, the oppressive baron, the profligate Church- 
man, the occasional expressions of popular discontent. Ir- 
regularities in human life are like the river cataracts and 
waterfalls which attract the landscape painter. The historian 
dwells upon them because they are dramatically interesting, 
but the broad features of those ages must be looked for in 
the commonplace character of everyday existence, which 
attracts little notice and can be traced only in the effects 
which it has produced. It was thus that the soil of this 
island was cleared and fenced and divided into fields as by 
a pencil. It was then that in every parish there arose a 
church, on which piety lavished every ornament which skill 
could command, and then and thus was formed the English 
nation, which was to exercise so vast an influence on the 
fortunes of mankind. They were proud of their liberty. A 
race never lived more sternly resolute to keep the soil of 
their sea-girt island untrodden by the foot of the invader. 
Liberty in the modern sense, liberty where the rights of 
man take the place of the duties of a man — such a liberty 



j6 LORD BEACONSFIELD 

they neither sought nor desired. As in an army, each 
man had had his own position under a graduated scale of 
authority, and the work was hardest where the rank was 
highest. The baron was maintained in his castle on the 
produce of the estate. But the baron had the hardest 
knocks in the field of battle. In dangerous times he was 
happy if he escaped the scaffold. He maintained his state 
in the outward splendour which belonged to his station, but 
in private he lived as frugally as his tenants, sleeping on a 
hard bed, eating hard, plain food, with luxury unheard of and 
undreamt of. The rule was loyalty — loyalty of the lord to 
the king, loyalty of lord to peasant and of peasant to lord. 
So deeply rooted was the mutual feeling that for long gene- 
rations after the relation had lost its meaning, and one of the 
parties had forgotten that it ever had a meaning, reverence 
and respect to the owner of the land lingered on and is 
hardly extinct to-day. 

In the towns the trades were organised under the guilds. 
The price of food, the rate of wages from household servant 
to field labourer and artisan, were ordered by statute on 
principles of equity. For each trade there was a council, 
and false measure and bad quality of goods were sharply 
looked to. The miller could not adulterate his flour. The 
price of wheat varied with the harvest, but the speculator 
who bought up grain to sell again at famine price found 
himself in the hands of the constable. For the children of 
the poor there was an education under the apprentice system, 
to which the most finished school-board training was as 
copper to gold. Boys and girls alike were all taught some 
useful occupation by which they could afterwards honestly 
maintain themselves. If there were hardships they were 
not confined to a single class, but were bor^e equally by the 



ENGLAND, PAST AND PRESENT 77 

great and the humble. A nation in a healthy state is an 
organism like the human body. If the finger says to the 
hand, ' I have no need of thee ; I will go my way, touch what 
pleases me, and let alone what I do not care to meddle with/ 
the owner of the hand will be in a bad way. A common- 
wealth, or common weal, demands that each kind shall do 
the work which belongs to him or her. When he or she, 
when individuals generally begin to think and act for them- 
selves, to seek their rights and their enjoyments, and forget 
their duties, the work of dissolution has already set in. 

The fear of God made England, and no great nation 
was ever made by any other fear. When the Catholic 
Church broke down it survived under Protestant forms, till 
Protestantism too dwindled into opinion and ceased to be a 
rule of life. We still read our Bibles and went to church ; 
we were zealous for the purity of our faith, and established 
our societies to propagate it ; but the faith itself became 
consistent with the active sense that pleasure was pleasant 
and wealth was power, and while our faith would make 
things right in the next world we might ourselves make 
something out of the present. From the Restoration down- 
wards the owners of land began to surround themselves 
with luxuries, and the employers of labour to buy it at the 
cheapest rate. Selfishness became first a practice and then 
developed boldly into a theory. Life was a race in which 
the strongest had a right to win. Every man was to be set 
free and do the best which he could for himself. The 
Institutions remained. Dukes and earls and minor digni- 
taries still wore their coronets and owned the soil. Bishops 
were the spiritual lords of their dioceses, and the rector 
represented the Church in his parish. The commercial 
companies survived in outward magnificence. But in 



78 LORD BEACONSFIELD 

aiming at wealth they all alike forfeited their power. 
Competition became the sole rule of trade ; a new philo- 
sophy was invented to gild the change ; artisans and 
labourers were taught to believe that they would gain as 
largely as the capitalists. They had been bondsmen ; they 
were now free, and all would benefit alike. Yet somehow 
all did not benefit alike. The houses of the upper classes 
grew into palaces, and the owners of them lived apart as a 
separate caste ; but the village labourer did not find his lot 
more easy because he belonged to nobody. As population 
increased his wages sank to the lowest point at which he 
could keep his family alive. The ' hands ' in the towns 
fared no better. If wages rose the cost of living rose along 
with them. The compulsory apprentice system was dropped, 
and the children were dragged up in squalor upon the 
streets. Discontent broke out in ugly forms : ricks were 
burnt in the country, and in the northern cities there was 
riot and disorder. They were told that they must keep the 
peace and help themselves. Their labour was an article 
which they had to sell, and the value of it was fixed by the 
relations between supply and demand. Man could not 
alter the laws of nature, which political economy had finally 
discovered. Political economy has since been banished to 
the exterior planets ; but fifty years ago to doubt was heresy, 
to deny was a crime to be censured in all the newspapers 
Carlyle might talk scornfully of the 'Disraeli science. 
Disraeli might heap ridicule on Mr. Flummery Flum. But 
Mr. Flummery Flum was a prophet in his day and led the 
believers into strange places. The race for wealth went on 
at railroad speed. Vast fortunes were accumulated as the 
world's markets opened wider. The working classes ought 
to have shared the profits, and they were diligently in- 



PROTECTION OR FREE TRADE 79 

structed that they had gained as much as their employers. 
But their practical condition remained unaltered, and they 
looked with strange eyes upon the progress in which, for one 
cause or another, they did not find that they participated. 
The remedy of the economists was to heat the furnace still 
hotter, to abolish every lingering remnant of restraint, and 
stifle complaint by admitting the working men to political 
power. The enlightened among the rich were not afraid, 
for they were entrenched, as they believed, behind their law 
of nature. In its contracts with labour capital must always 
have the advantage; for capital could wait and hungry 
stomachs could not wait. In the meantime let the Corn 
Laws go. Let all taxes on articles, of consumption go. 
Trade would then expand indefinitely, and all would be 
well. 'The wealth of the nation,' the Free-Traders of 
Manchester said, depends on its commerce. The com- 
merce of England is shackled by a network of duties. 
The consumer pays dear for the necessaries of life, which 
he might buy cheap but for artificial interference. The raw 
materials of our industry are burdened with restrictions. 
But for these we might multiply our mills, expand our con- 
nections, provide work and food for the milHons who are 
now hungry. With your Corn Laws you are starving mul- 
titudes to maintain the rents of a few thousand Elysians, 
who neither toil nor spin, who might be blotted off the 
surface of the soil to-morrow and none would miss them ; 
who consume the labours of the poor on a splendour of 
living unheard of since the Roman Empire, and extort the 
means of this extravagance by an arbitrary law. You say 
you must have a revenue to maintain your fleets and armies, 
and that it cannot be raised except by customs duties. Your 
fleets and armies are not needed. Take away your com- 



8o LORD BEACONSFlELD 

mercial fetters^ allow the nations of the earth a iree 
exchange of commodities with us, and you need not fear 
that they will quarrel with us : wars will be heard of no 
more, and the complaints of the poor that they are famished 
to supply the luxuries of the rich will no longer cry to Heaven. 
The Free-Traders might have been over-sanguine, but on 
the Corn Laws it was hard to answer them. The duties 
attaching to the ownership of land had fallen to shadows. 
The defence of the country had passed to the army. 
Internal peace was maintained by the police. Unless they 
volunteered to serve as magistrates the landlords had 
but to receive their rents and do as they pleased with their 
own. An aristocracy whose achievements, as recorded in 
newspapers, were the slaughter of unheard of multitudes of 
pheasants, an aristocracy to one of whose distinguished 
members a granite column was recently erected on a spot 
where he had slain fifty brace of grouse in half an hour, were 
scarcely in a position to demand that the poor man's loaf 
should be reduced in size, for fear their incomes should suffer 
diminution. Carlyle said that he had never heard an argu- 
ment for the Corn Laws which might not make angels weep. 
If the fear of suffering in their pockets had been the only 
motive which influenced the landed interest in its opposition 
to free trade, there would have been nothing to be said for 
it ; but if that had been all. Corn Laws in such a country 
as England could never have existed at all. Protection for 
native industry had been established for centuries. It had 
prevailed and still prevails in spite of the arguments of free- 
traders all the world over, and under all forms of govern- 
ment. The principle of it has been and is that no country 
is in a sound or safe condition which cannot feed its own 
population independent of the foreigner. Peace could not be 



PROTECTION OR FREE TRADE 8l 

counted on with an empire so extended as ours. Occasions 
of quarrel might arise which no prudence could avert. The 
world had seen many a commercial commonwealth rise to 
temporary splendour, but all had gone the same road, and 
a country which depended on its imports for daily bread 
would be living at the mercy of its rivals. Christianity had 
failed to extinguish war. It was not likely that commerce 
would succeed better, and the accidents of a single campaign, 
the successful blockade of our ports even for a month or a 
fortnight, might degrade us into a shameful submission. 
British agriculture was the creation of protection. Under 
the duties which kept out foreign corn waste lands had 
been reclaimed, capital had been invested in the soil, and 
with such success and energy that double the wheat was 
raised per acre in England as was produced in any country 
in the world. The farmer prospered, the labourer at least 
existed, and the country population was maintained. Take 
protection away and wheat would cease to be grown. The 
plough would rust in the shed ; the peasantry of the villages 
would dwindle away. They would drift into the towns in 
festering masses, living precariously from day to day, ever 
pressing on the means of employment with decaying 
physique and growing discontent. Cobden said the cost of 
carriage would partially protect the farmer. His own in- 
dustry must do the rest. The ocean steamers have made 
short work of the cost of carriage ; the soil could yield no 
more than it was bearing already. Cobden's more daring 
followers said that if the country districts returned to waste 
and forest the nation itself would be no poorer. In the 
defence of protection and in the denunciation of it there 
was alike a base element. The landlords were alarmed for 
their private interests. The manufacturer did expect that 

G 



82 LORD BEACONSFIELD 

if the loaf was cheaper labour would be cheaper, for by 
orthodox doctrine labour adjusted itself to the cost of 
living. But to statesmen, whose business it was to look 
beyond the day that was passing over them, there was rea- 
son to pause before rushing into a course from w^hich there 
could be no return, and which in another century might 
prove to have been a wild experiment. The price of food 
might be gradually reduced without immediate revolution, 
and the opportunity might be used to attach the colonies 
more closely to the mother country. The colonies and India, 
with the encouragement of an advantage in the home market, 
could supply corn without limit, and their connection with 
us would be cemented by interest ; while if they were placed 
on the same level as foreigners they would perhaps take 
us at our word and become foreigners. The traders insisted 
that if we opened our ports all the world would follow our 
example. But prophecies did not always prove correct, and, 
if the world did not follow our example, to fight prohibitive 
duties with free imports might prove a losing bargain. 



CREED, POLITICAL AND RELIGIOUS 83 



CHAPTER VI 

-Disraeli's belief, political and religious — Sympathy with the people 
— Defends the Chartists — The people, the middle classes, and the 
aristocracy — Chartist riots — Smart passage at arms in the House 
of Commons — Marriage — Mrs. Wyndham Lewis — Disraeli as a 
husband. 

Into this Maelstrom Disraeli was plunged when he entered 
Parliament. He had his own views. He knew the condi- 
tion of the poor both in England and Ireland. He had de- 
clared that no Government should have his support which did 
not introduce some large measure to improve that condition. 
He had chosen the Conservative side because he had no 
belief in the promises of the political economists, or in the 
blessed results to follow from cutting the strings and leaving 
everyone to find his level. He held to the old conception 
of the commonwealth that all orders must work faithfully 
together ; that trade was to be extended not by cheapness and 
free markets, but by good workmanship and superior merit ; 
and that the object which statesmen ought to set before 
themselves was the maintenance of the character of the 
people, not the piling up in enormous heaps of what 
wealth had now come to mean. The people themselves 
were groping, in their trades unions, after an organisation 
which would revive in other forms the functions of the 
Guilds j and the exact science of political economy would 

G 2 



84 LORD BEACONSFIELD 

cease to be a science at all, whenever motives superior to 
personal interest began to be acted upon. Science was 
knowledge of facts ; the facts most important to be known 
were the facts of human nature and human responsibilities ; 
and the interpretation of those facts which had been revealed 
to his own race, Disraeli actually believed to be deeper and 
truer than any modern speculations. Though calling him- 
self a Christian, he was a Jew in his heart. He regarded 
Christianity as only Judaism developed, and, if not com- 
pletely true, yet as immeasurably nearer to truth than the 
mushroom philosophies of the present age. He had studied 
Carlyle, and in some of his writings had imitated him. 
Carlyle did not thank him for this. Carlyle detested Jews, 
and looked on Disraeli as an adventurer fishing for fortune 
in Parliamentary w^aters. His novels he despised. His 
chains and velvets and affected airs he looked on as the 
tawdry love of vulgar ornament characteristic of Hounds- 
ditch. Nevertheless, Disraeli had taken his teaching to 
heart, and in his own way meant to act upon it. He 
regarded the aristocracy, like Carlyle also, in spite of the 
double barrels, as the least corrupted part of the community; 
and to them, in alliance with the people, he looked for 
a return of the English nation to the lines of true progress. 
The Church was moving at Oxford. A wave of political 
Conservatism was sweeping over the country. He thought 
that in both these movements he saw signs of a genuine 
reaction, and Peel, he still believed, would give effect to 
his hopes. 

These were his theoretic convictions, while outwardly he 
amused himself in the high circles which his Parliamentary 
notoriety had opened to him. His letters are full of dukes 
and princes and beautiful women, and balls and dinners. 



DISRAELI AND PEEL 8^ 

He ventured liberties, even in the presence of the great 
Premier, and escaped unpunished. In the spring of 1839 
he notes a dinner in Whitehall Gardens. ' I came late,' he 
says, 'having mistaken the hour. I found some twenty- 
five gentlemen grubbing in solemn silence. I threw a shot 
over the table and set them going, and in time they became 
noisy. Peel, I think, was pleased that I broke the awful 
stillness, as he talked to me a good deal, though we were 
far removed.' But though he enjoyed these honours and 
magnificences perhaps more than he need have done, he 
kept an independence of his own. It was supposed that he 
was looking for office, and that Peel's neglect of him in 1841 
was the cause of his subsequent revolt. Peel did make 
some advances to him through a third person, and said 
afterwards in the House that Disraeli had been ready to 
serve under him ; but if office was really his object, never 
did any man take a worse way of recommending himself. 
In the summer of the same-year (1839) the monster Chartist 
petition was brought down to the House of Commons in 
the name of the working people of England, and the general 
disposition was to treat it as an absurdity and an insult. 
Disraeli, when his turn came to speak, was not ashamed to 
say that, though he disapproved of the Charter, he sympa- 
thised with the Chartists. They were right, he thought, in 
desiring a fairer share in the profits of their labour, and that 
fairer share they were unlikely to obtain from the commer- 
cial constituences whom the Reform Bill had enfranchised. 
Great duties could alone confer great station, and the new 
class which had been invested with political station had 
not been bound up with the mass of the people by the 
exercise of corresponding obligations. Those who possessed 
power without discharging its conditions and duties, were 



S6 LORD BEACONSFIELD 

naturally anxious to put themselves to the least possible 
expense and trouble. Having gained their own object, they 
wished to keep it without appeal to their pockets, or cost 
of their time. The true friends of the people ought to be 
the aristocracy, and in very significant words he added that 
' the English nation would concede any degree of political 
power to a class making simultaneous advances in the 
exercise of great social duties.' 

The aristocracy had lost their power because their duties 
had been neglected. They might have wealth or they might 
have power ; but not both together. It was not too late to 
reconsider the alternative. The Chartists, finding themselves 
scoffed out of the House of Commons, took to violence. 
There were riots in Birmingham, and a Chartist convention 
sat in London threatening revolution. Lord John Russell 
appealed for an increase of the police. Disraeh was one of 
a minority of five who dared to say that it was unnecessary, 
and that other measures ought to be tried. When the 
leaders were seized, he supported his friend, Tom Buncombe, 
in a protest against the harshness of their treatment. The 
Chancellor of the Exchequer rebuked him. Fox Maule, 
a junior member of the Government, charged him with 
being ' an advocate of riot and disorder.' In later times 
Disraeli never struck at small game. When he meant fight, 
he went for the leading stag of the herd. On this occasion 
he briefly touched his two shght antagonists. 'Under- 
Secretaries,' he said, ' were sometimes vulgar and ill-bred. 
From a Chancellor of the Exchequer to an Under-Secretary 
of State was a descent from the sublime to the ridiculous, 
though the sublime was on this occasion rather ridiculous, 
and the ridiculous rather trashy ! ' 

It is scarcely conceivable that if Disraeli was then 



DISRAELI AND PEEL ^y 

aspiring to harness under Sir Robert, he would have com- 
mitted himself with such reckless audacity ; and his action 
was the more creditable to him as the profession which he 
had chosen brought him no emoluments. His financial 
embarrassments were thickening round him so seriously, 
that without office it might soon become impossible to 
continue his Parliamentary career. Like Bassanio, 

When he had lost one shaft, 
He shot his fellow of the self-same flight 
The self-same way with more advised watch 
To find the other forth, and by adventuring both 
He oft found both. 

But one shaft had disappeared after another till he had 
reached the last in his quiver. He had not been personally 
extravagant. He had moved in the high circles to which 
he had been admitted rather as an assured spectator than 
as an imitator of their costly habits. But his resources 
were limited to the profits of his writings, and to such sums 
as he could raise on his own credit. His position was 
critical in the extreme, and Disraeli's star might then have 
set like a planet which becomes visible at twilight on the 
western horizon, and shows out in its splendour only to set 
into the sea. The temptation to sell oneself under such 
circumstances would have been too much for common 
Parliamentary virtue. But Disraeli was a colt who was not 
to be driven in a team by a master. Lord Melbourne had 
asked him once what he wished for. He had answered 
coolly that he wished to be Prime Minister. The insanity 
of presumption was in fact the insanity of second sight ; 
but ' vaulting ambition ' would have ' fallen on the other 
side ' if a divinity had not come to his assistance. 

The heroes of his political novels are usually made to owe 



8S LORD SEACONSFil£tt) 

their first success to wealthy marriages. Coningsby, Egre- 
mont, Endymion, though they deserve their good fortune, 
yet receive it from a woman's hand. Mr. Wyndham Lewis, 
who had brought Disraeh into Parhament, died unexpectedly 
the year after. His widow, the clever rattling flirt, as he had 
described her on first acquaintance, after a year's mourn- 
ing, became Disraeli's wife. She was childless. She was 
left the sole possessor of a house at Grosvenor Gate, and a 
life income of several thousands a year. She was not 
beautiful. Disraeli was thirty-five, and she was approaching 
fifty. But she was a heroine if ever woman deserved the 
name. She devoted herself to Disraeli with a completeness 
which left no room in her mind for any other thought. As 
to him, he had said that he would never marry for love. 
But if love, in the common sense of the word, did not 
exist between these two, there was an affection which stood 
the trials of thirty years, and deepened only as they both 
declined into age. She was his helpmate, his confidante, 
his adviser ; from the first he felt the extent of his obliga- 
tions to her, but the sense of obligation, if at first felt as 
a duty, became a bond of friendship perpetually renewed. 
The hours spent with his wife in retirement were the happiest 
that he knew. In defeat or victory he hurried home from 
the House of Commons to share his vexation or his triumph 
with his companion, who never believed that he could fail. 
The moment in his whole life which perhaps gave him 
greatest delight was that at which he was able to decorate 
her with a peerage. To her he dedicated ' Sybil.' 

'I,' he says, 'would inscribe this work to one whose 
noble spirit and gentle nature ever prompt her to sympa- 
thise with the suffering; to one whose sweet voice has 
often encouraged, and whose taste and judgment have ever 



MARRIAGE 89 

guided its pages, the most severe of critics, but a '' perfect 
wife." ' The experience of his own married Hfe he describes 
in ' Coningsby ' as the sohtary personal gift which nature had 
not bestowed upon a special favourite of fortune. ' The lot 
most precious to man, and which a beneficent Providence 
has made not the least common — to find in another heart a 
perfect and profound sympathy, to unite his existence with 
one who could share all his joys, soften all his sorrows, aid 
him in all his projects, respond to all his fancies, counsel 
him in his cares and support him in his perils, make life 
charming by her charms, interesting by her intelligence, and 
sweet by the vigilant variety of her tenderness — to find your 
life blessed by such an influence, and to feel that your 
influence can bless such a life ; the lot the most divine of 
divine gifts, so perfect that power and even fame can 
never rival its delights — all this nature had denied to 
Sidonia,' It had not been denied to Disraeli himself. 

The carriage incident is well known. On an anxious 
House of Commons night, Mrs. Disraeli drove down with 
her husband to Palace Yard. Her finger had been caught 
and crushed in the carriage-door. - She did not let him 
know what had happened, for fear of disturbing him, and 
was not released from her torture till he had left her. That 
is perfectly authentic, and there are other stories like it. 
A husband capable of inspiring and maintaining such 
an attachment most certainly never ceased to deserve it. 
Savagely as he was afterwards attacked, his most indignant 
enemy never ventured to touch his name with scandal. A 
party of young men once ventured a foolish jest or two at 
Mrs. Disraeli's age and appearance, and rallied him on the 
motives of his marriage. ' Gentlemen,' said Disraeli, as he 
rose and left the room, ' do none of you know what gratitude 



90 LORD BEACONSFIELD 

means ? ' This was the only known instance in which he 
ever spoke with genuine anger. 

'Gratitude,' indeed, if deeply felt, was as deeply 
deserved. His marriage made him what he became. 
Though never himself a rich man, or endeavouring to make 
himself such, he was thenceforward superior to fortune. His 
difficulties were gradually disposed of. He had no longer 
election agents' bills to worry him, or debts to usurers 
running up in compound ratio. More important to him, he 
was free to take his own line in politics, relieved from the 
temptation of seeking office. 



ENGLISH PROGRESS 9 1 



CHAPTER VII 

The enthusiasm of progress — Carlyle and Disraeli — Protection and 
Free Trade — Sir Robert Peel the Protectionist Champion — High 
Church movement at Oxford — The Church as a Conservative 
power — Effect of the Reform Bill — Disraeli's personal views — 
Impossible to realise — Election of 1841— Sir Robert Peel's Ministry 
— Drifts towards Free Trade —Peel's neglect of Disraeli — Tariff of 
1842 — Young England — Symptoms of revolts— First skirmish with 
Peel — Remarkable speech on Ireland. 

The discovery of the steam-engine had revolutionised the 
relations of mankind, and during the decline of the Mel- 
bourne Ministry was revolutionising the imagination of the 
English nation. The railroads were annihilating distances 
between town and town. Roads were opening across the 
ocean, bringing the remotest sea-coasts in the world within 
sure and easy reach. Possibilities of an expansion of com- 
merce practically boundless inflated hopes and stimulated 
energies. In past generations England had colonised half 
the new world ; she had become sovereign of the sea ; she 
had preserved the liberties of Europe, and had made her 
name feared and honoured in every part of the globe ; but 
this was nothing compared to the prospect, which was now 
unfolding itself, of becoming the world's great workshop. 
She had invented steam -, she had coal and iron in a com- 
bination and quantity which no other nation could rival ; 
she had a population ingenious and vigorous, and capable, 



92 Lord beaconsfieli) 

if employment could be found for them, of indefinite 
multiplication. The enthusiasm of progress seized the 
popular imagination. No word was tolerated which implied 
a doubt, and the prophets of evil, like Carlyle, were Hstened 
to with pity and amusement. The stars in their courses 
were fighting for the Free Traders. The gold-discoveries 
stimulated the circulation in the national veins, and pros- 
perity advanced with leaps and bounds. 

The tide has slackened now; other nations have 
rejected our example, have nursed their own industries, and 
supply their own wants. The volume of English trade 
continues to roll on, but the profits diminish. The crowds 
who throng our towns refuse to submit to a lowering of 
wages, and perplex economists and politicians with uneasy 
visions: we are thus better able to consider with fairness the 
objections of a few far-seeing statesmen forty and fifty years 
ago. 

As far as the thoughts of an ambitious youth who had 
taken Pistol's ' The world's mine oyster ' as the motto of his 
first book, and perhaps as the rule of his life — of a gaudy 
coxcomb who astonished drawing-rooms with his satin 
waistcoats, and was the chosen friend of Count D'Orsay — as 
far as the thoughts of such a person as this could have any 
affinity with those of the stern ascetic who, in the midst of 
accumulating splendour, was denouncing woe and desolation, 
so far, at the outset of his Parliamentary life, the opinions 
of Benjamin Disraeli, if we take ' Sybil ' for their exponent, 
were the opinions of the author of ' Past and Present.' 
Carlyle thought of him as a fantastic ape. The interval 
between them was so vast that the comparison provokes 
a smile. Disraeli was to fight against the Repeal of the 
Corn Laws : Carlyle said that of all strange demands, the 



THE CORN LAWS AND POLITICAL ECONOMY 93 

Strangest was that the trade of owning land should be 
asking for higher wages ; and yet the Hebrew conjuror, 
though at a humble distance, and not without an eye open 
to his own advancement, was nearer to him all along than 
Carlyle imagined. Disraeli did not believe any more than 
he that the greatness of a nation depended on the abun- 
dance of its possessions. He did not believe in a progress 
which meant the abolition of the traditionary habits of the 
people, the destruction of village industries, and the accu- 
mulation of the population into enormous cities, where 
their character and their physical qualities would be 
changed and would probably degenerate. The only progress 
which he could acknowledge was moral progress, and he 
considered that all legislation which proposed any other 
object to itself would produce, in the end, the effects which 
the prophets of his own race had uniformly and truly fore- 
told. 

Under the old organisation of England, the different 
orders of men were bound together under reciprocal 
obligations of duty. The economists and their political 
followers held that duty had nothing to do with it. Food, 
wages, and all else had their market value, which could be 
interfered with only to the general injury. The employer 
was to hire his labourers or his hands at the lowest rate at 
which they could be induced to work. If he ceased to 
need them, or if they would not work on terms which would 
remunerate him, he was at liberty to turn them off. The 
labourers, in return, might make the best of their own 
opportunity, and sell their services to the best advantage 
which competition allowed. The capitalists found the 
arrangement satisfactory to them. The people found it less 
satisfactory, and they replied by Chartism and rick -burnings. 



94 LORD BEACONSFIELD 

The economists said that the causes of discontent were the 
Corn Laws and the other taxes on food. Farmers and land- 
owners exclaimed that if the Corn Laws were repealed, the 
land must go out of cultivation. The Chartists were not 
satisfied with the remedy, because they believed that, with 
cheap food, wages would fall, and they would be no better 
off than they were. It was then slack water in the political 
tides. Public feeling was at a stand, uncertain which way to 
turn. The Reform Bill of 1832 had left to property the 
preponderance of political power, and everyone who had 
anything to lose began to be alarmed for himself. The 
Conservative reaction became more and more evident. The 
faith of the country was in Sir Robert Peel. He had been 
opposed to the Reform Bill, but when it was passed he had 
accepted it as the law of the land, and had reconstituted 
his party out of the confidence of the new constituencies. 
He had been a declared Protectionist. He had defended 
the Corn Laws, and had spoken and voted for them. He 
had resisted the proposal by the Whigs of a fixed eight- 
shilling duty, and had accepted and gloried in the position 
of being the leader of the gentlemen of England. But he 
had refused to initiate any policy of his own. He was 
known to be cautious, prudent, and a master of finance. 
He was no believer in novel theories or enthusiastic 
visions, but he had shown by his conduct on the Catholic 
question that he could consider and allow for the practical 
necessities of things. He was, however, above all things 
an avowed Conservative, and as a Conservative the country 
looked to him to steer the ship through the cataracts. 

Another phenomenon had started up carrying a Con- 
servative colour. Puseyism had appeared at Oxford, and 
was rapidly spreading. The Church of England, long 



CHURCH REVIVAL 95 

paralysed by Erastianism and worldliness, was awaking out 
of its sleep, and claiming to speak again as the Divinely- 
appointed ruler of English souls. Political economy had 
undertaken to manage things on the hypothesis that men 
had no souls, or that their souls, if they possessed such 
entities, had nothing to do with their commercial relations to 
one another. The Church of England, as long as it remained 
silent or sleeping, had seemed to acquiesce in the ne\v 
revelation, but it was beginning to claim a voice again in the 
practical affairs of the w^orld, and the response, loud and 
strong, indicated that there still remained among us a power 
of latent conviction which might revive the force of noble 
and disinterested motive. A Church of England renovated 
and alive again might, some thought, become an influence 
of incalculable consequence. Carlyle's keen, clear eyes 
refused to be deceived. ' Galvanic Puseyism,' he called it, 
and ' dancings of the sheeted dead.' A politician like 
Disraeli looking out into the phenomena in which he was 
to play his part, and thinking more of what was going on 
among the people than of the immediate condition of 
Parliamentary parties, conceived that he saw in the new 
movement, not only an effort of Conservative energy, but 
an indication of a genuine recoil from moral and spiritual 
anarchy towards the Hebrew principle in which he really 
believed. Two forces he saw still surviving in England 
which had been overlooked, or supposed to be dead — respect 
for the Church, and the voluntary loyalty (which, though 
waning, might equally be recovered) of the people towards 
the aristocracy. Perhaps he overrated both because he had 
been himself born and bred outside their influence, and 
thus looked at them without the insight which he gained 
afterwards on more intimate acquaintance. To some extent, 



g6 LORD BEACONSFIELD 

however, they were realities, and were legitimate subjects 
of calculation. Extracts from his writings will show 
how his mind was working. He had been studying the 
action of the Reform Bill of 1832. No one pretended, 
he said, that it had improved the character of Parliament 
itself. 

' But had it exercised a beneficial influence in the 
country ? Had it elevated the tone of the public mind ? 
Had it cultivated the popular sensibilities to noble and 
ennobling ends? Had it proposed to the people of 
England a higher test of national respect and confidence ? 
... If a spirit of rapacious covetousness, desecrating all 
the humanities of life, has been the besetting sin of England 
for the last century and a half, since the passing of the 
Reform Act the altar of Mammon has blazed with a triple 
worship. To acquire, to accumulate, to plunder each other 
by virtue of philosophic phrases — to propose a Utopia to 
consist only of Wealth and Toil — this has been the business 
of enfranchised England for the last twelve years, until we 
are startled from our voracious strife by the wail of intolerable 
serfage.' ^ 

Again : ' Born in a library, and trained from early child- 
hood by learned men who did not share the passions and 
the prejudices of our political and social life, I had imbibed 
on some subjects conclusions different from those which 
generally prevail, and especially with reference to the history 
of our own country. How an oligarchy had been substi- 
tuted for a kingdom, and a narrow-minded and bigoted 
fanaticism flourished in the name of religious liberty, were 
problems long to me insoluble, but which early interested 
me. But what most attracted my musing, even as a boy, 



EFFECTS OF THE REFORM BILL 97 

were the elements of our political parties, and the strange 
mystification by which that which was national in our Con- 
stitution had become odious, and that which was exclusive 
was presented as popular. 

' What has mainly led to this confusion is our carelessness 
in not distinguishing between the excellence of a principle 
and its injurious or obsolete application. The feudal 
system may have worn out; but its main principle — that 
the tenure of property should be the fulfilment of duty — is 
the essence of good government. The divine right of kings 
may have been a plea for feeble tyrants; but the divine 
right of government is the key of human progress, and 
without it governments sink into a police, and a nation is 
degraded into a mob. . . . National institutions were the 
ramparts of a multitude against large estates, exercising 
political power, derived from a limited class. The Church 
was in theory, and once it had been in practice, the 
spiritual and intellectual trainer of the people. The privi- 
leges of the multitude and the prerogative of the sovereign 
had grown up together, and together they had waned. 
Under the plea of Liberalism, all the institutions which were 
the bulwark of the multitude had been sapped and weakened, 
and nothing had been substituted for them. The people 
were without education, and relatively to the advance of 
science and the comfort of the superior classes, their con- 
dition had deteriorated and their physical quality as a race 
was threatened. 

* To change back the oligarchy into a generous aristocracy 
round a real throne ; to infuse life and vigour into the Church 
as the trainer of the nation by the revival of Convocation, 
then dumb, on a wise basis ; to establish a commercial code 
on the principles successfully negotiated by Lord Bolingbroke 

H 



98 LORD BEACONSFIELD 

at Utrecht, and which, though baffled at the time by a Whig 
Parhament, were subsequently and triumphantly vindicated 
by his pupil and political heir, Mr. Pitt ; to govern Ireland 
according to the policy of Charles I., and not of Oliver 
Cromwell; to emancipate the political constituency of 1832 
from its sectarian bondage and contracted sympathies ; to 
elevate the physical as wxll as the moral condition of the 
people by establishing that labour required regulation as 
much as property — and all this rather by the use of ancient 
forms and the restoration of the past, than by political 
revolutions founded on abstract ideas — appeared to be the 
course which the circumstances of the country required, 
and which, practically speaking, could only, with all their 
faults and backslidings, be undertaken and accomplished by 
a reconstructed Tory party. 

' When I attempted to enter public life, I expressed these 
views, long meditated, to my countrymen. ... I incurred 
the accustomed penalty of being looked on as a visionary. 
. . . Ten years afterwards, affairs had changed. I had been 
some time in Parliament, and had friends who had entered 
public life with myself, who listened always with interest, 
and sometimes with sympathy. . . . The writer, and those 
who acted with him, looked then upon the Anglican Church 
as a main machinery by which these results might be realised. 
There were few great things left in England, and the Church 
was one. Nor do I doubt that if a quarter of a century 
ago there had arisen a Churchman equal to the occasion, 
the position of ecclesiastical affairs in this country would 
have been very different from that which they now occupy. 
But these great matters fell into the hands of monks and 
schoolmen. The secession of Dr. Newman dealt a blow to 
the Church under which it still reels. That extraordinary 



DISAPPOINTED HOPES 99 

event has been "apologised" for, but it has never been 
explained. The tradition of the Anglican Church was 
powerful. Resting on the Church of Jerusalem modified 
by the Divine school of Galilee, it would have found that 
rock of truth which Providence, by the instrumentality of 
the Semitic race, had promised to St. Peter. Instead of 
that, the seceders sought refuge in medieval superstitions 
which are generally only the embodiments of Pagan cere- 
monies and creeds.' ^ 

Writing after the experience of thirty years of Parlia- 
mentary life, Disraeli thus described the impressions and 
the hopes with which he commenced his public career. 
He was disappointed by causes which he partly indicates, 
and by the nature of things which he then imperfectly 
realised. But, carefully considered, they explain the whole 
of his action down to the time when he found his ex- 
pectation incapable of realisation. His Church views 
were somewhat hazy, though he was right enough about 
the Pagan ceremonies. 

After their marriage, the Disraelis spent two months on 
the Continent. They went to .Baden, Munich, Frankfort, 
Ratisbon, Nuremburg, seeing galleries and other curiosities. 
In November they returned to England, to the house in 
Grosvenor Gate which was thenceforward their London 
home, and Disraeli took his place on an equal footing 
as an established member of the great world. He was in- 
troduced to the Duke of Wellington, who had hitherto 
known him only by reputation. He received Peel's congratu- 
lations on his marriage with admitted pride and pleasure, 
and began to give dinners on his own account to leading 
members of his party. The impecunious adventurer had 

' Preface to Lothair. 

H 2 



100 LORD BEACONSFIELD 

acquired the social standing without which the most 
briUiant gifts are regarded with a certain suspicion. 

At the general election in 1841, Sir Robert Peel was 
borne into power, with a majority returned on Protec- 
tionist principles, larger than the most sanguine enthusiast 
had dared to hope for, Disraeli himself being returned for 
Shrewsbury— his connection with Maidstone having been 
probably broken by his late colleague's death. When the 
new Parliament settled to work, Peel took the reins, and 
settled the finances by an income-tax — then called a tem- 
porary expedient, but in fact a necessary condition of the 
poHcy which at once he proceeded to follow. Duties were 
reduced in all directions, but there was no word of com- 
mercial treaties. Free Trade principles were visibly to be 
adopted, so far as the state of parties would allow, and the 
indications grew daily stronger that no such policy as 
DisraeH desired had come near the Premier's mind. The 
middle classes had confidence in Peel. It seemed that 
Peel had confidence in them, and Disraeli had none at all. 
Still, Peel was his political chief, and Disraeli continued to 
serve him, and to serve effectively and zealously. More 
and more he displayed his peculiar powers. When he 
chose he was the hardest hitter in the House of Commons ; 
and as he never struck in malice, and selected always an 
antlered stag for an adversary, the House was amused at 
his audacity. Palmerston on some occasion regretted that 
the honourable member had been made an exception to 
the rule that political adherents ought to be rewarded by 
appointments. He trusted that before the end of the 
Session the Government would overlook the slight want of 
industry for the sake of the talent. Disraeli ' thanked the 
noble viscount for his courteous aspirations for his political 



POWERS IN THE HOUSE OF COMMONS lOI 

promotion. The noble viscount was a master of the 
subject. If the noble viscount would only impart to him 
the secret by which he had himself contrived to retain 
office during so many successive administrations, the present 
debate would not be without a result.' Such a passage at 
arms may have been the more entertaining because Disraeli 
was supposed to have resented the neglect of his claims 
when Peel was forming his Administration. It is probable 
that Peel had studied the superficial aspects of his character, 
had underrated his ability, had discerned that he might not 
be sufficiently docile, or had suspected and resented his 
advocacy of the Chartists. Disraeli may have thought that 
the offer ought to have been made to him, but it is evident 
that on other grounds the differences between them would 
tend to widen. The Tariff of 1842 was the first note of 
alarm to the Conservative party — Disraeli defended it, but 
not with an entire heart. ' Peel,' he said in a letter to his 
sister,^ ' seems to have pleased no party, but I suppose the 
necessity of things will force his measure through : affairs 
may yet simmer up into foam and bubble, and there may 
be a row.' The Conservatives had been trusted by the 
country with an opportunity of trying their principles which, 
if allowed to pass, might never be renewed. Their leader 
was not yet openly betraying them, but everyone but him- 
self began to perceive that the Conservatism of the Govern- 
ment was only to be Liberalism in disguise. 

Disraeli individually had the satisfaction of feeling that 
he was becoming a person of consequence. He ran across 
to Paris, and dined privately with Louis Philippe. In 
London he was presented to the King of Hanover, 'the 
second king who has shaken hands with me in six months.' 
1 February 2, 1842. 



102 LORD BEACONSFIELD 

Public affairs he found ' uncertain and unsatisfactory,' Peel 
' frigid and feeble,' and 'general grumbling.' He continued 
to speak, and speak often and successfully ; but the mutual 
distrust between him and his chief was growing. 

Peel among his magnificent qualities had not the art of 
conciliating the rank-and-file of his supporters. He regarded 
them too much as his own creatures, entitled to no con- 
sideration. Disraeli, taking the whole field of politics for 
his province, met with rebuke after rebuke. He had seen 
by this time that for his own theories there was no hope 
of countenance from the present chief. He had formed a 
small party among the younger Tory members — men of rank 
and talent, with a high-bred enthusiasm which had been 
kindled by the Church revival. A party including Lord 
John Manners, George Smyth, Henry Hope, and Baillie 
Cochrane was not to be despised ; and thus reinforced and 
encouraged, he ventured to take a line of his own. 

Among the articles of faith w^as the belief that Ireland 
ought to be treated on the principles of Charles I., and not 
on the principles of Cromwell. O'Connell in 1843 was 
setting Ireland in a flame again, and Peel, better acquainted 
with Ireland than Disraeli, and hopeless of other remedy, 
had introduced one of the periodic Coercion Bills. The 
Young Englanders, as he and his friends were now called, 
had Catholic sympathies, and they imagined that religion was 
at the bottom of these perpetual disturbances. Coercion 
answered only for the moment. A more conciliatory atti- 
tude towards the ancient creed might touch the secret of 
the disease. Disraeli perhaps wished to show that he bore 
no malice against O'Connell or against his tail. He thought 
that he could persuade the Irish that they had more to hope 
for from Cavalier Tories than from Roundhead Whigs. Of 



PERSONAL INDEPENDENCE IO3 

Irish history he knew as little as the rest of the House of 
Commons. He had heard, perhaps, of the Glamorgan 
Articles and Charles I.'s negotiations with the Kilkenny 
Parliament. Peel, when in opposition, had talked about 
conciliation. In office he had nothing to propose but force. 
Disraeli, when the Bill came before the House, gave the first 
sign of revolt j he said that it was one of those measures 
which to introduce was degrading, and to oppose disgraceful. 
He would neither vote for it nor against it ; but as Peel had 
departed from the policy which he had led his party to hope 
that he meant to pursue before he came into power, he 
(Disraeli), speaking for himself and his friends, declared 
that they were now free from the bonds of party on this 
subject of Ireland, for the right hon. gentleman himself 
had broken them. They had now a right to fall back on 
their own opinions. 

Something still more significant was to follow. A few 
days later (August 1843) the Eastern question came up. 
Disraeli, whose friendship for the Turks was of old standing, 
asked a question relating to Russian interference in Servia. 
Peel gave an abrupt answer to end the matter. Palmerston, 
however, taking it up, Disraeli had a further opportunity of 
speaking. He complained that Turkey had been stabbed 
in the back by the diplomacy of Europe ; that the integrity 
and independence of the Turkish dominions were of vital 
consequence, &c. But the point of his speech was in the 
sting with which it concluded. Winding up in the slow, 
deliberate manner which he made afterwards so peculiarly 
effective, he reminded the House of his own previous ques- 
tion, ' couched, he believed, in Parliamentary language, and 
made with all that respect which he felt for the right hon. 
gentleman. 'To this inquiry,' he said, 'the right hon. 



104 Lord beAconsfieli) 

gentleman replied with all that explicitness of which he 
was a master, and all that courtesy which he reserved only 
for his supporters.' 

The House of Commons had much of the generous 
temper of an English public school. Boys like a little 
fellow who has the courage to stand up to a big one, and 
refuses to be bullied. The Whigs were amused at the 
mutiny of a Tory subordinate. The Tory rank-and-file 
had so often smarted under Peel's contempt that the blow 
told, and Disraeli had increased his consequence in the 
House by another step. Those who judge of motive by 
events, and assure themselves that when the actions of a man 
lead up to particular effects, those effects must have been 
contemplated by himself from the outset of his career, see 
indication in these speeches of a deliberate intention on 
Disraeli's part to supersede Sir Robert Peel in the leadership 
of the Conservative party. The vanity of such a purpose, 
had it been really entertained, would have been exceeded 
by the folly of his next movement. In the following year 
O'Connell's monster meetings had become a danger to the 
State. Peel had again to apply to the House of Commons, 
with a general sense on both sides that the authority of the 
Crown must be supported. Disraeli, almost alone among 
the English members, took the same daring attitude which 
he had assumed on the Chartist petition. Being in reality 
a stranger in the country of his adoption, he was able to 
regard the problems with which it was engaged in the light 
in which they appeared to other nations. The long mis- 
management of Ireland, its chronic discontent and miserable 
state, were regarded everywhere as the blot upon the 
English escutcheon, and the cause of it was the mutual 
jealousy and suspicion of parties at Westminster. If a 



THE Irish question 105 

remedy was ever to be found, party ties must be thrown to 
the winds. What, he asked, did this eternal Irish question 
mean ? One said it was a physical question, another a 
spiritual question. Now it was the absence of an aristocracy, 
then the absence of railroads. It was the Pope one day, 
potatoes the next. Let the House consider Ireland as they 
would any other country similarly situated, in their closets. 
They would see a teeming population denser to the square 
mile than that of China, created solely by agriculture, with 
none of those sources of wealth which are developed by 
civilisation, and sustained upon the lowest conceivable diet. 
That dense population in extreme distress inhabited an 
island where there was an Established Church which was 
not their Church, and a territorial aristocracy the richest of 
whom lived in distant capitals. They had a starving popu- 
lation, an absentee aristocracy, and an alien Church, and, 
in addition, the weakest executive in the world. That 
was the Irish question. Well, then, what would honour- 
able gentlemen say if they were reading of a country in 
that position ? They would say at once ' the remedy was 
revolution.' But Ireland could not have a revolution ; and 
why ? Because Ireland was connected with another and 
more powerful country. Then what was the consequence ? 
The connection with England became the cause of the 
present state of Ireland. If the connection with England 
prevented a revolution, and a revolution was the only 
remedy, England logically was in the odious position of 
being the cause of all the misery in Ireland. What, then, 
was the duty of an English Minister? To effect by his 
policy all those changes which a revolution would do by 
force. That was the Irish question in its integrity. ... If the 
noble lord (Lord John Russell) or any other honourable 



I06 LORD BEACONSFIELD 

member came forward with a comprehensive plan, which 
would certainly settle the question of Ireland, no matter 
what the sacrifice might be, he would support it, though he 
might afterwards feel it necessary to retire from Parliament 
or to place his seat at the disposal of his constituency 
(' Life of Lord Beaconsfield,' T. P. O'Connor, 6th edition 
p. 255, &c.). 

Truer words had not been spoken in Parliament on the 
subject of Ireland for half a century, nor words more fatal 
to the immediate ambition of the speaker, if ambition he 
then entertained beyond a patriotic one ; and many a session, 
and many a century perhaps, would have to pass before a 
party could be formed in England strong enough to carry on 
the government on unadulterated principles of patriotism. 



YOUNG ENGLAND 107 



CHAPTER VIII 

Young England and the Oxford Tractarians — Disraeli a Hebrew at 
heart — ' Coningsby ' — « Sidonia '— ' Sybil ; or, the Two Nations ' — 
The great towns under the new creed — Lords of the soil as they 
were and as they are — Disraeli an aristocratic Socialist — Prac- 
tical working of Parliamentary institutions —Special importance of 
'Sybil.' 

According to Disraeli's theory of government, the natural 
rulers of England were the aristocracy, supported by the 
people. The owners of the soil were the stable element in 
the Constitution. Capitalists grew like mushrooms, and 
disappeared as rapidly ; the owners of the land remained. 
Tenants and labourers looked up to them with a feeling of 
allegiance ; and that allegiance might revive into a living 
principle if the aristocracy would deserve it by reverting to 
the habits of their forefathers. That ancient forces could 
be awakened out of their sleep seemed proved by the 
success of the Tractarian movement at Oxford. The bold 
motto of the ' Lyra Apostolica ' proclaimed that Achilles was 
in the field again, and that Liberalism was to find its master. 
The Oxford leaders might look doubtfully on so strange an 
ally as a half-converted Israelite. But DisraeH and the 
Young Englanders had caught the note, and were endeavour- L 
ing to organise a political party on analogous lines. It was 
a dream.. No such regeneration, spiritual or social, was 
really possible. Times were changed, and men had 



J 



I08 LORD BEACONSFIELD 

changed along with them. The Oxford movement was 
already undermined, though Disraeli knew it not. The 
English upper classes were not to be persuaded to alter 
habits which had become a second nature to them, or the 
people to be led back into social dependence by enthusiasm 
and eloquence. Had any such resurrection of the past 
been on the cards, Disraeli was not the necromancer who 
could have bid the dead live again. No one had a keener 
sense of the indications in others than he had. Fuller self- 
knowledge would have told him that the friend of D'Orsay 
and Lady Blessington, of Tom Duncomb and Lytton 
Bulwer, was an absurd associate in an ecclesiastical and 
social revival. He seemed to think that if Newman had 
paid more attention to ' Coningsby,' the course of things 
might have been different. Saints had worked with secular 
politicians at many periods of Christian history ; why 
not the Tractarian with him ? Yet the juxtaposition of 
Newman and Disraeli cannot be thought of without an 
involuntary smile. It w^ould be wrong to say that Disraeli 
had no sincere religious convictions. He was a Hebrew to 
the heart of him. He accepted the Hebrew tradition as a 
true account of the world, and of man's place in it. He 
was nominally a member of the Church of England ; 
but his Christianity was something of his own, and his 
creed, as sketched in his ' Life of Lord George Bentinck,' 
would scarcely find acceptance in any Christian com- 
munity. 

I have mentioned ' Coningsby.' It is time to see what 
' Coningsby ' was. Disrael's novels had been brilliant, but he 
had touched nowhere the deeper chords of enduring feeling. 
His characters had been smart, but trivial ; and his higher 
flights, as in the ' Revolutionary Epic,' or his attempts to paint 



'coningsby' 109 

more delicate emotion, as in ' Henrietta Temple ' or in 
* Venetia,' if not failures, were not successes of a distinguished 
kind. He had shown no perception of what was simple, or 
true, or tender, or admirable. He had been at his best 
when mocking at conventional humbug. But his talent as 
a writer was great, and, with a subject on which he was really 
in earnest, might produce a powerful effect. To impress 
the views of the Young Englanders upon the public, some- 
thing more was needed than speeches in Parliament or on 
platforms. Henry Hope, son of the author of ' Anastasius,' 
collected them in a party at his house at Deepdene, and 
there first 'urged the expediency of Disraeli's treating in 
a literary form those views and subjects which were the 
matter of their frequent conversations.' The result was 
' Coningsby ' and ' Sybil.' 

' Coningsby ; or, the New Generation ' carried its meaning 
in its title. If England was to be saved by its aristocracy, the 
aristocracy must alter their ways. The existing representa- 
tives of the order had grown up in self-indulgence and 
social exclusiveness ; some excellent, a few vicious, but all 
isolated from the inferior ranks, and all too old to mend. 
The hope, if hope there was, had to be looked for in their 
sons. 

As a tale, ' Coningsby ' is nothing ; but it is put together 
with extreme skill to give opportunities for typical sketches 
of character, and for the expression of opinions on social 
and political subjects. We have pictures of fashionable 
society, gay and giddy, such as no writer ever described 
better ; peers, young, middle-aged, and old, good, bad, and 
indifferent, the central figure a profligate old noble of 
immense fortune, whose person was easily recognised, and 
whose portrait was also preserved by Thackeray. Besides 



no LORD BEACONSFIELD 

these, intriguing or fascinating ladies, political hacks, country 
gentlemen, mill-owners, and occasional wise outsiders, 
looking on upon the chaos and delivering oracular interpre- 
tations, or prophecies. Into the middle of such a world 
the hero is launched, being the grandson and possible heir 
of the wicked peer. Lord Monmouth is a specimen of the 
order which was making aristocratic government impossible. 
To tax corn to support Lord Monmouth was plainly im- 
possible. The story opens at Eton, which Disraeh describes 
with an insight astonishing in a writer who had no experi- 
ence of English public school life, and with a fondness 
which confesses how much he had lost in the substitutes to 
which he had been himself condemned. There Coningsby 
makes acquaintance with the high-born youths who are to 
be his companions in the great world which is to follow, then 
in the enjoyment of a delightful present, and brimming with 
enthusiastic ambitions. They accompany each other to 
their fathers' castles, and schemes are meditated and begun 
for their future careers ; Disraeh letting fall, as he goes on, 
his own political opinions, and betraying his evident dis- 
belief in existing Conservatism, and in its then all-powerful 
leader. He finds Peel constructing a party without prin- 
ciples, with a basis therefore necessarily latitudinarian, and 
driving into political infidelity. There were shouts about 
Conservatism ;. but the question, What was to be conserved ? 
was left unanswered. The Crown was to keep its prerogatives 
provided they were not exercised ; the House of Lords 
might keep its independence if it was never asserted ; 
the ecclesiastical estate if it was regulated by a commission 
of laymen. Everything, in short, that was established might 
remain as long as it was a phrase and not a fact. The 
Conservatism o/" Sir Robert ' offered no redress for the 



'CONINGSBY' III 

present,' and made no preparations for the future. On the 
arrival of one of those critical conjunctures which would 
periodically occur in all States, the power of resistance 
would be wanting ; the barren curse of political infidelity 
would paralyse all action, and the Conservative Constitution 
would be discovered to be a caput inortimm. 

' Coningsby found that he was born in an age of infidelity 
in all things, and his heart assured him that a want of faith 
was a want of nature. He asked himself why governments 
were hated and religions despised, why loyalty was dead 
and reverence only a galvanised corpse. He had found age 
perplexed and desponding, manhood callous and desperate. 
Some thought that systems would last their time, others 
that something would turn up. His deep and pious spirit 
recoiled with disgust and horror from lax chance medley 
maxims that would, in their consequence, reduce men to the 
level of brutes.' 

He falls in with all varieties of men bred in the confusion 
of the old and the new. An enthusiastic Catholic landlord 
tries to revive the customs of his ancestors, supported by 
his faith, but perplexed by the aspect of a world no longer 
apparently under supernatural guidance. ' I enter life,' says 
Mr. Lyle, ' in the midst of a convulsion in which the very 
principles of our political and social system are called in 
question. I cannot unite myself with the party of destruc- 
tion. It is an operative cause alien to my being. What, 
then, offers itself? The duke talks to me of Conservative 
principles, but he does not inform me what they are. I ob- 
serve, indeed, a party in the State whose rule it is to consent 
to no change until it is clamorously called for, and then in- 
stantly to yield : but those are concessionary, not Conser- 
vative, principles. This party treats our institutions as we 



112 LORD BEACONSFIELD 

do our pheasants. They preserve only to destroy them 
But is there a statesman among these Conservatives who 
offers us a dogma for a guide, or defines any great political 
truth which we should aspire to estabhsh ? It seems to me 
a barren thing, this Conservatism ; an unhappy cross-breed, 
the mule of politics, that engenders nothing.' 

Coningsby had saved the life of a son of a Northern 
mill-owner at Eton. They became attached friends, though 
they were of opposite creeds. Coningsby's study of the 
social problem carries him to Manchester, where he hears 
from Millbank the views entertained in the industrial circles 
of the English aristocracy. Mr. Millbank dislikes feudal 
manners as out of date and degenerate. 

' I do not understand,' he says, ' how an aristocracy can 
exist, unless it is distinguished by some quality which no 
other class of the community possesses. Distinction is the 
basis of aristocracy. If you permit only one class of the 
population, for example, to bear arms, they are an aristocracy : 
not much to my taste, but still a great fact. That, however, 
is not the characteristic of the English peerage. I have yet 
to learn that they are richer than we are, better informed, or 
more distinguished for public or private virtue. Ancient 
lineage ! I never heard of a peer with an ancient lineage. 
The real old families of the country are to be found among 
the peasantry. The gentry, too, may lay claim to old blood : 
I know of some Norman gentlemen whose fathers un- 
doubtedly came in with the Conqueror. But a peer with an 
ancient lineage is to me quite a novelty. The thirty years' 
Wars of the Roses freed us from these gentlemen, I take it. 
After the battle of Tewkesbury a Norman baron was almost 
as rare a being as a wolf . . . We owe the English peerage 
to three sources — the spoliation of the Church, the open and 



'CONINGSBY ' 



113 



flagfant sale of its honours by the elder Stuarts, and the 
borough-mongering of our own times. These are the three 
main sources of the existing peerages of England, and in my 
opinion disgraceful ones.' 

* And where will you find your natural aristocracy ? ' asked 
Coningsby. 'Among those,' Millbank answers, 'whom a 
nation recognises as the most eminent for virtue, talents, and 
property, and, if you will, birth and standing in this land. 
They guide opinions, and therefore they govern. I am 
no leveller ; I look upon an artificial equality as equally 
pernicious with a factitious aristocracy, both depressing the 
energies and checking the enterprise of a nation. I am 
sanguine. I am the disciple of progress, but I have cause 
for my faith. I have witnessed advance. My father often 
told me that in his early days the displeasure of a peer of 
England was like a sentence of death.' 

A more remarkable figure is Sidonia, the Hebrew finan- 
cier, who is represented very much in the position of Disraeli 
himself, half a foreigner, and impartial onlooker, with a 
keen interest in the stability of English institutions, but 
with the insight possible only to an outsider, who observes 
without inherited prepossessions. Sidonia, the original of 
whom is as easily recognised, is, like Disraeli, of Spanish 
descent. His father staked all that he was worth on the 
Waterloo Loan, became the greatest capitalist in Europe, 
and bequeathed his business and his fortune to his son. 

The young Sidonia ' obtained, at an early age, that ex- 
perience of refined and luxurious society which is a necessary 
part of a finished education. 

' It gives the last polish to the manners. It teaches us 
something of the powers of the passions, early developed in 
the hotbed of self-indulgence. It instils into us that inde- 

I 



114 LORD BEACONSFIELD 

finable tact seldom obtained in later life, which prevents us 
from saying the wrong thing, and often impels us to do the 
right. He was admired by women, idolised by artists, re- 
ceived in all circles with great distinction, and appreciated 
for his intellect by the very few to whom he at all opened 
himself ; for, though affable and generous, it was impossible 
to penetrate him : though unreserved in his manners, his 
frankness was limited to the surface. He observed every- 
thing, thought ever, but avoided serious discussion. If you 
pressed him for an opinion, he took refuge in raillery, and 
threw out some grave paradox with w^hich it was not easy to 
cope. . . He looked on life with a glance rather of curiosity 
than contempt. His religion walled him out from the pur- 
suits of a citizen. His riches deprived him of the stimulat- 
ing anxieties of a man. He perceived himself a lone being 
without cares and without duties. He might have discovered 
a spring of happiness in the sensibilities of the heart ; but 
this was a sealed fountain to Sidonia. In his organisation 
there was a peculiarity, perhaps a great deficiency : he was a 
man without affection. It would be harsh to say that he had 
no heart, for he was susceptible of deep emotions ; but not 
for individuals — woman was to him a toy, man a machine.' 
Though Sidonia is chiefly drawn from another person, 
Disraeli himself can be traced in this description. The 
hand is the hand of Esau ; the voice is the voice of Jacob. 
'The secret history of the world was Sidonia's pastime.' 
' His great pleasure was to contrast the hidden motive 
with the public pretext of transactions.' This was Disraeli 
himself, and through Sidonia's mouth Disraeli explains to 
Coningsby the political condition of England. The Consti- 
tution professed to rest on the representation of the people. 
Coningsby asks him what a representative system means. 



'CONINGSBY 115 

He replies : ' It is a principle of which only a limited defi- 
nition is current in this country. People may be represented 
without periodic elections of neighbours who are incapable 
to maintain their interests, and strangers who are unwilling. 
. . . You will observe one curious trait in the history of this 
country. The depositary of power is always unpopular : all 
combine against it : it always falls. Power was deposited 
in the great barons ; the Church, using the king for its in- 
strument, crushed the great barons. Power was deposited in 
the Church ; the king, bribing the Parliament, plundered the 
Church. Power was deposited in the king ; the Parliament, 
using the people, beheaded the king, expelled the king, 
changed the king, and finally for a king substituted an ad- 
ministrative officer. For a hundred and fifty years Power 
has been deposited in Parliament, and for the last sixty or 
seventy years it has been becoming more and more unpopular. 
In 1832, it endeavoured by a reconstruction to regain the 
popular affection ; but, in truth, as the Parliament then only 
made itself more powerful, it has only become more odious. 
As we see that the barons, the Church, the king, have in 
turn devoured each other, and that the Parliament, the last 
devourer, remains, it is impossible to resist the impression 
that this body also is doomed to be devoured ; and he is 
a sagacious statesman who may detect in what form and in 
what quarter the great consumer will arise.' 

' Whence, then,' Coningsby asks, ' is hope to be looked 
for ? ' Sidonia replies : 

' In what is more powerful than laws and institutions, and 
without which the best laws and the most skilful institutions may 
be a dead letter or the very means of tyranny : in the national 
character. It is not in the increased feebleness of its institu- 
tions that I see the peril of England. It is in the decline of 

I 2 



Il6 LORD BEACONSFIELD 

its character as a community. In this country, since the peace, 
there has been an attempt to advocate a reconstruction of 
society on a purely rational basis. The principle of utility has 
been powerfully developed. I speak not with lightness of the 
disciples of that school : I bow to intellect in every form : and 
we should be grateful to any school -of philosophers, even if we 
disagree with them : doubly grateful in this country where for 
so long a period our statesmen were in so pitiable an arrear of 
public intelligence. There has been an attempt to reconstruct 
society on a basis of material motives and calculations. It has 
failed. It must ultimately have failed under any circumstances. 
Its failure in an ancient and densely-peopled kingdom was 
inevitable. How limited is human reason the profoundest 
engineers are most conscious. We are not indebted to the 
reason of man for any of the great achievements which are the 
landmarks of human action and human progress. It was not 
reason that besieged Troy. It was not reason that sent forth 
the Saracen from the desert to conquer the world, that inspired 
the Crusader, that instituted the monastic orders. It was not 
reason that created the French revolution. Man is only truly 
great when he acts from the passions, never irresistible but 
when he appeals to the imagination. Even Mormon counts 
more votaries than Bentham. The tendency of advanced civili- 
sation is, in truth, to pure monarchy. Monarchy is indeed a 
government which requires a high degree of civilisation for its 
full development. It needs the support of free laws and man- 
ners, and of a widely-diffused intelligence. Political compro- 
mises are not to be tolerated except at periods of rude transition. 
An educated nation recoils from the imperfect vicariate of what 
is called representative government. Your House of Commons, 
that has absorbed all other powers in the State, will in all pro- 
bability fall more rapidly than it rose. Public opinion has a 
more direct, a more comprehensive, a more efficient organ for 
its utterance than a body of men sectionally chosen. The 
printing-press absorbs the duties of the sovereign, the priest, 
the Parliament. It controls, it educates, it discusses.' 

No attempt can be made here to analyse ' Coningsby.' 



'CONINGSBY' Ii;7 

The object of these extracts is merely to illustrate Disraeli's 
private opinions. Space must be made for one more — a 
conversation between Coningsby and the younger Millbank. 
'Tell me, Coningsby,' Millbank says, 'exactly what you 
conceive to be the state of parties in this country,' 
Coningsby answers : 

' The principle of the exclusive Constitution of England having 
been conceded by the Acts of 1 827-1 832, a party has arisen in 
the State who demand that the principle of political Liberalism 
shall consequently be carried to its full extent, which it appears 
to them is impossible without getting rid of the fragments of 
the old Constitution which remain. This is the destructive party, 
a party with distinct and intelligible principles. They are resisted 
by another party who, having given up exclusion, would only 
embrace as much Liberalism as is necessary for the moment — 
who, without any embarrassing promulgation of principles, wish 
to keep things as they find them as long as they can ; and these 
will manage them as they find them, as well as they can : but, 
as a party must have the semblance of principles, they take the 
names of the things they have destroyed. Thus, they are 
devoted to the prerogatives of the Crown, although in truth the 
Crown has been stripped of every one of its prerogatives. They 
affect a great veneration for the Constitution in Church and 
State, though everyone knows it no longer exists. Whenever 
public opinion, which this party never attempts to form, to 
educate, or to lead, falls into some perplexity, passion, or caprice, 
this party yields without a struggle to the impulse, and, when 
the storm has passed, attempts to obstruct and obviate the 
logical and ultimately inevitable results of the measures they 
have themselves originated, or to which they have consented. 
This is the Conservative party. 

' As to the first school, I have no faith in the remedial qualities 
of a government carried on by a neglected democracy who for 
three centuries have received no education. What prospect 
does it offer us of those high principles of conduct with which 
Y(^ liaye fgd Qur ima^inatiojis and strengthened Qur wills ? I 



Il8 LORD BEACONSFIELD 

perceive none of the elements of government that should secure 
the happiness of a people and the greatness of a realm. But if 
democracy be combated only by Conservatism, democracy must 
triumph and at no distant date. The man who enters political 
life at this epoch has to choose between political infidelity and 
a destructive creed.' 

' Do you declare against Parliamentary government ?' 
' Far from it : I look upon political change as the greatest ot 
evils, for it comprehends all. But if we have no faith in the 
permanence of the existing settlement .... we ought to prepare 
ourselves for the change which we deem impending. ... I would 
accustom the public mind to the contemplation of an existing 
though torpid power in the Constitution capable of removing 
our social grievances, were we to transfer to it those prerogatives 
which the Parliament has gradually usurped, and used in a 
manner which has produced the present material and moral 
disorganisation. The House of Commons is the house of a 
few : the sovereign is the sovereign of all. The proper leader of 
the people is the individual who sits upon the throne.' 
' Then you abjure the representative principle ? ' 
' Why so ? Representation is not necessarily, or even in a 
principal sense, Parliamentary. Parliament is not sitting at this 
moment : and yet the nation is represented in its highest as 
well as in its most minute interests. Not a grievance escapes 
notice and redress. I see in the newspapers this morning that 
a pedagogue has brutally chastised his pupil. It is a fact 
known over all England — opinion is now supreme, and opinion 
speaks in print. The representation of the Press is far more 
complete than the representation of Parliament. Parliamentary 
representation was the happy device of a ruder age, to which it 
was admirably adapted. But it exhibits many symptoms of 
desuetude. It is controlled by a system of representation more 
vigorous and comprehensive, which absorbs its duties and 
fulfils them more efficiently. . . . Before a royal authority, sup- 
ported by such a national opinion, the sectional anomalies of 
our country would disappear. Under such a system even 
statesmen would be educated. We should have no more diplo- 
matists who could not speak French, no more bishops ignorant 



'SYBIL' 119 

of theology, no more generals-in-chief who never saw a field. 
There is a polity adapted to our laws, our institutions, our feel- 
ings, our manners, our traditions : a polity capable of great 
ends, and appealing to high sentiments : a polity which, in my 
opinion, would render government an object of national affection, 
would terminate sectional anomalies, and extinguish Chartism.' 

Disraeli was singularly regardless of the common arts ot 
party popularity. He had spoken in defence of the Chart- 
ists when he was supposed to be bidding for a place under 
Sir Robert Peel ; he had used language about Ireland, 
sweeping, peremptory, going to the heart of the problem, 
which Whig and Tory must have alike resented; and he 
had risked his seat by his daring. He was now telling the 
country, in language as plain as Carlyle's, that Parliament 
was an effete institution — and the House of Commons which 
he treated so disdainfully was in a few years to choose him 
for its leader. The anomalies in Disraeli's life grow more 
astonishing the deeper we look into them. 

' Sybil,' published the next year, is more remarkable 
than even 'Coningsby.' 'Sybil; or, the Two Nations,' the two 
nations being the Rich and the Poor. Disraeli had person- 
ally studied human life in the manufacturing towns. He 
had seen the workman, when trade was brisk and wages high, 
enjoying himself in his Temple of the Muses ; he had seen 
him, when demand grew slack, starving with his family in the 
garret, with none to help him. He had observed the inso- 
lent frauds of the truckmaster. He had seen the inner side 
of our magnificent industries which legislation was struggling 
to extend : he had found there hatred, anarchy, and incen- 
diarism, and he was not afraid to draw the lurid picture in 
the unrelieved colours of truth. 

The first scene opens on the eve of the Derby, when, in 



120 LORD BEACONSFIELD 

a splendid club-room, the languid aristocrats, weary of the 
rolling hours, are making up their betting-books — they the 
choicest and most finished flowers of this planet, to whom the 
Derby is the event of the year. They are naturally high- 
spirited young men, made for better things, but spoilt by 
their education and surroundings. 

From the youth we pass to the mature specimens of the 
breed who are in possession of their estates and their titles. 
Lord Marney's peerage dates from the suppression of the 
monasteries, in which his ancestor had been a useful instru- 
ment. 

The secretary of Henry VIII.'s vicar-general had 
been rewarded by the lands of a northern abbey. The 
property had grown in value with the progress of the country. 
The family for the three centuries of its existence had never 
produced a single person who had contributed any good 
thing to the service of the commonwealth. But their conse- 
quence had grown with their wealth, and the Lord Marney of 
' Sybil ' was aspiring to a dukedom. He is represented (being 
doubtless drawn from life) as the harshest of landlords, 
exacting the utmost penny of rent, leaving his peasantry 
to squalor and disease, or driving them off his estates to 
escape the burden of the poor-rate, and astonished to find 
Swing and his bonfires starting up about him as his natural 
reward. The second great peer of the story. Lord 
Mowbray, of a yet baser origin and character, owns the land 
on which has grown a mushroom city of mills and mill- 
hands. The ground-rents have made him fabulously rich, 
while, innocent of a suspicion that his wealth has brought 
obligations along with it, he lives in vulgar luxury in his 
adjoining castle. 

Qri both estates the wretchedness is equal, though the 



'SYBIL' 121 

character of it is different. Lord Marney rules in a country 
district. A clergyman asks him how a peasant can rear 
his family on eight shillings a week. ' Oh, as for that,' said 
Lord Marney, ' I have generally found the higher the wages, 
the worse the workmen. They only spend their money in 
the beershops. They are the curse of the country.' The 
ruins of the monastery give an opportunity for a contrast 
between the old England and the new, by a picture of 
the time when the monks were the gentlest of landlords, 
when exactions and evictions were unknown, and when 
churches were raised to the service of God in the same 
spots where now rise the brick chimneys and factories as 
the spires and temples of the modern Mammon-worship. 

In Mowbray, the town from which the earl of that 
name drew his revenue, the inhabitants were losing the 
elementary virtues of humanity. Factory-girls deserted 
their parents, and left them to starve, preferring an 
independence of vice and folly ; mothers farmed out their 
children at threepence a week to be got rid of in a month 
or two by laudanum and treacle. Disraeli was startled to 
find that 'infanticide was practised as extensively and 
legally in England as it was on the banks of the Ganges.' 
It is the same to-day : occasional revelations lift the cur- 
tains, and show it active as ever ; familiarity has led us to 
look upon it as inevitable; the question, what is to be 
done with the swarms of children multiplying in our towns, 
admitting, at present, of no moral solution. 

With some elaboration, Disraeli describes the human 
creatures bred in such places which were growing up to take 
the place of the old English. 

' Devilsdust ' — so one of these children came to be 
called, for he h^d no legitimate name or parentage — having 



122 LORD BEACONSFIELD 

survived a baby-farm by toughness of constitution, and the 
weekly threepence ceasing on his mother's death, was turned 
out into the streets to starve or to be run over. 

Even this expedient failed. The youngest and feeblest of 
the band of victims, Juggernaut spared him to Moloch. All 
his companions were disposed of. Three months' play in the 
streets got rid of this tender company, shoeless, half-naked, and 
uncombed, whose ages varied from two to five years. Some were 
crushed, some were lost ; some caught cold and fever, crept back to 
their garrets or their cellars, were dosed with Godfrey's Elixir, and 
died in peace. The nameless one, Devilsdust, would not disap- 
pear : he always got out of the way of the carts and horses, and 
never lost his own. They gave him no food : he foraged for his 
own, and shared with the dogs the garbage of the streets. But 
still he lived : stunted and pale, he defied even the fatal fever 
which was the only habitant of his cellar that never quitted it, 
and slumbering at night on a bed of mouldering straw, his only 
protection against the plashy surface of his den, with a dung- 
heap at his head and a cesspool at his feet, he still clung to the 
only roof that sheltered him from the tempest. At length, when 
the nameless one had completed his fifth year, the pest which 
never quitted the nest of cellars of which he was a citizen raged in 
the quarter with such intensity that the extinction of its swarm- 
ing population was menaced. The haunt of this child was 
peculiarly visited. All the children gradually sickened except 
himself : and one night when he returned home he found the 
old woman herself dead and surrounded only by corpses. The 
child before this had slept on the same bed of straw with a 
corpse ; but then there were also breathing things for his com- 
panions. A night passed only with corpses seemed to him 
itself a kind of death. He stole out of the cellar, quitted the 
quarter of pestilence, and, after much wandering, lay down near 
the door of a factory. 

The child is taken in, not out of charity, but because 
an imp of such a kind happens to be wanted, and Devils- 
dust grows up, naturally enough, a Chartist and a dangerous 



'sybil' 123 

member of society. But was there ever a more horrible 
picture drawn ? It is hke a chapter of Isaiah in Cockney 
novehst dress. Such things, we are told, cannot happen now. 
Can they not ? There was a recent revelation at Battersea 
not so unlike it. The East-end of London produces crimes 
which are not obliterated because they are forgotten ; and 
rag bundles may be seen on frosty nights at London house- 
doors, which, if you unroll them, discover living things not 
so unlike poor Devilsdust. For the future, these waifs and 
strays are at least to be sent to school. The school will 
do something, especially if one full meal a day is added to 
the lessons ; but what is the best of Board schools compared 
to the old apprenticeship ? The apprentice had his three 
full meals a day, and decent clothes, and decent lodging, 
and was taught some trade or handicraft by which he could 
earn an honest living when his time was out. The school 
cannot reach the miserable home. The school teaches no 
useful occupation, and when school-time is over the child 
is again adrift upon the world. He is taught to read and 
WTite. His ■ mind is opened. Yes. He is taught to 
read the newspapers, and the penny dreadfuls, and his wits 
are sharpened for him. Whether this will make him a 
more useful or more contented member of society, time will 
show. 

Devilsdust was but one of many products of the manu- 
facturing system which Disraeli saw and meditated upon. 

He found a hand-loom weaver starving with his children 
in a garret, looking back upon the time when his loom had 
given him a cottage and a garden in his native village. The 
new machinery had ruined him, and he did not complain of 
the inevitable. But, as it was too late for him to learn 
another trade, he argued that if a society which had been 



124 LORD BEACONSFIELD 

created by labour suddenly became independent of it, that 
society was bound to maintain those whose only property 
was labour, out of the profits of that other property which 
had not ceased to be productive. 

He talks with a superior artisan, who says to him : 

' There is more serfdom in England now than at any time 
since the Conquest. I speak of what passes under my daily 
eyes when I say that those who labour can as little change or 
choose their masters now as when they were born thralls. There 
are great bodies of the working classes of this country nearer 
the condition of brutes than they have been at any time since 
the Conquest. Indeed, I see nothing to distinguish them from 
brutes, except that their morals are inferior. Incest and infanti- 
cide are as common among them as among the lower animals. 
The domestic principle wanes weaker and weaker every year in 
England : nor can we wonder at it when there is no comfort to 
cheer and no sentiment to hallow the home. 

' I am told a working man has now a pair of cotton stockings, 
and that Henry VIII. himself was not as well off. ... I deny 
the premisses. I deny that the condition of the main body 
is better now than at any other period of our history — that it is 
as good as it has been at several. The people were better 
clothed, better lodged, and better fed just before the Wars of the 
Roses than they are at this moment. The Acts of Parliament, 
from the Plantagenets to the Tudors, teach us alike the prices 
of provisions and the rate of wages.' 

' And are these the people ? ' the hero of the story asks 
himself, after such conversations. ' If so, I would I lived 
more among them. Compared with this converse, the tattle 
of our saloons has in it something humiliating. It is not 
merely that it is deficient in warmth and depth and breadth ; 
that it is always discussing persons instead of principles ; 
choking its want of thought in mimetic dogmas, and its 
want of feeling in superficial raillery. It is not merely that 



SYBIL ^ 125 

it hag neither imagination, nor fancy, nor sentiment, nor 
knowledge to recommend it, but it appears to me, even as 
regards manners and expressions, inferior in refinement and 
phraseology, trivial, uninteresting, stupid, really vulgar.' 

The tattle of politics was no better than the tattle of the 
saloons. Disraeli's experience in the northern towns had 
shown him what a problem lay before any Government of 
England which deserved the name. The Reform Bill was 
now twelve years old, and political liberty, so far, had not 
touched the outside of the disease. London, with its cliques 
and parties, its balls and festivities, seemed but an iridescent 
scum over an abyss of seething wretchedness. Here was 
work for rulers, if ruling was ever again to mean more 
than intrigue for office and manipulation of votes. Devils- 
dusts by thousands were generating in the vapour of Free 
Trade industry, while the Tadpoles and the Tapers, the 
wirepullers of the House of Commons, were in a fever of 
agitation whether the Great Bedchamber question was to 
bring back the Melbourne Ministry, or whether Peel was to 
have his way. 

Tadpole : The malcontent Liberals who have turned them 
out are not going to bring them in again. That makes us 
equal. Then we have an important section to work upon, the 
Sneaks, the men who are afraid of a dissolution. I will be 
bound we make a good working Conservative majority of 
twenty-five out of the Sneaks. 

Taper : With the Treasury patronage, fears and favours com- 
bined, and all the places we refuse our own men, we may count 
on the Sneaks. 

Tadpole : There are several religious men who have wanted 
an excuse for a long time to rat. We must get Sir Robert to 
make some kind of a religious move, and that will secure Sir 
Litany Lax and young Mr. Salem. 

Taper .-It will never do_ to throw over the Church Commis- 



126 LORD EEACONSFIELD 

sion. Commissions and committees ought always to be sup= 
ported. 

Tadpole : Besides, it will frighten the saints. If we could 
get Sir Robert to speak at Exeter Hall, were it only a slavery 
meeting I — that would do. 

Taper : It is difficult : he must be pledged to nothing, not 
even to the right of search. Yet if we could get up something 
with a good deal of sentiment and no principle involved, re- 
ferring only to the past, but with his practical powers touching 
the present ! What do you think of a monument to Wilberforce 
or a commemoration of Clarkson ? 

Tadpole : There is a good deal in that. At present go about 
and keep our fellows in good humour. Whisper nothings that 
sound like something. But be discreet. Do not let there be 
more than half-a-hundred fellows who believe they are going 
to be Under-Secretaries of State. And be cautious about titles. 
If they push you, give a wink and press your finger to your lips. 
I must call here on the Duke of FitzAquitaine. This gentle- 
man is my particular charge. I have been cooking him these 
three years. I had two notes from him yesterday, and can 
delay no longer. The worst of it is he expects I shall bear 
him the non-official announcement of his being sent to Ireland, 
of which he has about as much chance as I have of being 
Governor-General of India. It must be confessed ours is critical 
work sometimes, friend Taper. But never mind : we have to 
do with individuals ; Peel has to do with a nation ; and there- 
fore we ought not to complain. 

Is this a libel, or is it a fair account of the formation and 
working of English governments ? Let those answer who 
have read the memoirs of the leading statesmen of the 
present century. Is there anywhere to be found, in the 
records of the overthrow or building-up of Cabinets, any 
hint, even the slightest, of an insight into the condition of 
the country, or of a desire to mend it ? Forces were at 
w^ork shattering the bodily frames and destroying the souls 
of millions of those whom they were aspiring to guide. Do 



'sybil' 127 

we find anything at all, save manoeuvres for a new turn of 
the political kaleidoscope ? Might not Sidonia, might not 
Disraeli himself, reasonably doubt whether such methods of 
selecting administrations would be of long continuance ? 

Enough of ' Sybil.' Disraeli skilfully contrives to dis- 
tribute poetical justice among his imaginary characters — 
to bring his unworthy peers to retribution, and to reward 
the honest and the generous. He could do it in a novel. 
Unfortunately, the reality is less tractable. ' A year ago,' he 
says, in concluding the story, ' I presumed to offer to the 
public some volumes (" Coningsby ") that aimed at calling 
their attention to the state of political parties, their origin, 
their history, their present position. In an age of mean 
passions and petty thoughts, I would have impressed upon 
the rising race not to despair, but to seek in a right under- 
standing of the history of their country, and in the energies 
of heroic youths, the elements of national welfare. The 
present work advances a step in the same emprise. From 
the state of parties it would draw^ public thought to the 
state of the people whom those parties for two centuries 
have governed. The comprehension and the cure of this 
greater theme depend upon the same agencies as the first. 
It is the past alone that can explain the present, and it is 
youth alone that can mould the remedial future. . . . The 
written history of our country for the last ten years has been 
a mere phantasm. . . . Oligarchy has been called Liberty ; 
an exclusive priesthood has been christened a National 
Church. Sovereignty has been the title of something that 
has had no dominion, while absolute power has been 
wielded by those who profess themselves the servants of the 
people. In the selfish strife of factions, two great existences 
have been blotted out of the history of England : the 



128 Lord beaconsfielo 

monarch and the multitude. As the power df the Crown 
has diminished, the privileges of the people have disap- 
^eatedj till at length the sceptre has become a pageant, and 
the subject has degenerated again into a serf. . . . 

' That we may live to see England once more possess a free 
monarchy, and a privileged and prosperous people, is my 
prayer ; that these great consequences can only be brought 
about by the energy and devotion of our youth, is my 
persuasion. . . . The claims of the future are represented 
by suifering millions, and the youth of a nation are the 
trustees of posterity. 



THF: NEW CREED i29 



CHAPTER IX 

The New Gospel — Effect on English character — The Manchester 
School — Tendencies of Sir Robert Peel — The Corn Laws — Peel 
brought into office as a Protectionist — Disraeli and Peel — Pro- 
tracted duel — Effect of Disraeli's speeches — Final declaration of 
Peel against the Corn Laws — Corn Laws repealed — Lord George 
Bentinck — Irish Coercion Bill — The Canning episode — Defeat and 
fall of Peel — Disraeli succeeds to the Leadership of the Conser- 
vative Party. 

With the light which is thrown by ' Sybil ' on the workings 
of Disraeli's mind, it is easy to understand the feehngs with 
which he regarded the words and actions of Sir Robert Peel. 
He had seen, or supposed himself to have seen, a poisonous 
fungus eating into the heart of English life. In town and 
country, among the factory operatives, and on the estates 
of the rich and the noble, there was one rapid process of 
degeneracy. The peasantry were serfs, without the redeem- 
ing features of serfdom; the town artisans were becoming 
little better than brutes. In the cities, family and the 
softer influences of home were ceasing to exist. Children 
were being dragged up in misery or were left to die, 
and life was turned into a flaring workshop in which the 
higher purposes of humanity were obliterated or forgotten. 
The cause was everywhere the same. The gospel of poli- 
tical economy had been substituted for the gospel of Christ. 
The new law was to make money ; the new aim of all 

K 



130 LORD BEACONSFIELD 

classes, high and low alike, was to better their condition, 
as it was called, and make the most of their opportunities. 
Each must look out for himself: one man was not an- 
other's keeper ; labour was an article of trade, which the 
employer was to buy as cheap as he could get it, and the 
workman was to sell for the most that he could get. There 
their duties to each other ended, and the results were the 
scenes which he had witnessed in Marley and Mowbray. 
The further trade was extended under the uncontrolled 
conditions demanded by the ' Manchester school,' the more 
these scenes would multiply. 

With the powerful Protectionist majority returned by 
the elections of 1841, Peel, in Disraeli's opinion, had an 
opportunity of bringing these demoralising tendencies under 
the authority of reason and conscience. The Corn Laws 
were but one feature of the problem. The real question 
was whether England was to remain as she had been, the 
nursing mother of a noble breed of men, or whether the 
physical and moral qualities of a magnificent race were to 
be sacrificed to a rage for vulgar wealth. Disraeli had not 
flattered his party. In Trafford and in the elder Millbank, 
he had drawn manufacturers who were splendidly alive to 
their duties. The ennobled landowners he had left to be 
represented by such men as Lord Marley. He was a 
Radical of the Radicals, a Radical who went to the root of 
the mischief. Like Carlyle, he was telling his country that 
unless they brought authority to deal with it, the England 
which we were so proud of would speedily forfeit her place 
among the nations of the world. It is likely enough that 
Peel would have failed if he had tried. His own followers 
were thinking more of their rents than of the moral con- 
dition of the people. But at any rate he was not trying, and 



SIR ROBERT PEEL I31 

evidently had no thought of trying. He took the course 
which promised most immediate success. To restore au- 
thority required an aristocracy who could be trusted to use 
it, and there was none such ready to hand. Wages must be 
left to the market where he found them. All that he could 
do to help the people was to cheapen the food which was 
bought with them, to lay taxation on the shoulders best 
able to bear it, and by education and such other means as 
he could provide to enable the industrious and the thoughtful 
to raise themselves, since neither legislation nor administra- 
tion could raise them. Cheap food and popular education 
was his highest ideal. Peel could see what was immediately 
before him clearer than any man. His practical sagacity 
forbade him to look farther or deeper. 

But the difficulty of his position lay in his having been 
brought into power as a Protectionist. The constituencies 
had given him his majority in reply to his own Protectionist 
declarations. If Free Trade was to be made the law of the 
land was Peel to repeat the part which he had played in 
Catholic emancipation ? All reasonable Conservatives knew 
that the corn laws must be modified ; but the change, if 
inevitable, need not be precipitate. Peel's great defect, 
Disraeli said in his ' Life of Lord George Bentinck,' was 
that he wanted imagination, and in wanting that he wanted 
prescience. No one was more sagacious when dealing with 
the circumstances before him. His judgment was fault- 
less, provided that he had not to deal with the future. But 
insight into consequences is the test of a true statesman, 
and because Peel had it not Catholic emancipation. Parlia- 
mentary Reform, and the abrogation of the commercial 
system were carried in haste or in passion, and without 
conditions or mitigatory arrangements. On Canning's 

K 2 



135 LORD BEACONSFIELD 

death the Tories might have had the game in their hands. 
A moderate reconstruction of the House of Commons, the 
transfer of the franchises of a few corrupt boroughs to the 
great manufacturing towns, would have satisfied the country. 
Peel let the moment pass, and the Birmingham Union 
and the Manchester Economic School naturally followed. 
His policy was to resist till resistance was ineffectual, and 
then to grant wholesale concessions as a premium to poli- 
tical agitation. The same scene was being enacted over 
again. Sir Robert had rejected Lord John Russell's eight- 
shilling duty. It appeared now, from the course in which 
he was drifting, that the duty would be swept away alto- 
gether. 

In whatever way Peel had acted it is not likely that the 
state of England at present would have differed materially 
from what it is. The forces which were producing either 
the decay or the renovation of the Constitution, whichever 
it proves to be, were too powerful for the wisest statesman 
either to arrest or materially direct. Plato thought that had 
he been born a generation sooner he might have saved 
Greece. The Olympian gods themselves could not have 
saved Greece. But when untoward events arrive they are 
always visited on the immediate actors in them, and Dis- 
raeli visited on Peel the ruin of his own party and the 
disappointment of his own hopes. Perhaps, as he was but 
half an Englishman, his personal interest in the question at 
issue was not extreme. It is possible that he had resented 
Peel's neglect of him. At any rate he saw his opportunity 
and used it to make his name famous. Hitherto he had 
been known in the House of Commons as a brilliant and 
amusing speaker, but of such independent ways that even 
the Conservatives gave him but a limited confidence. 



PEEL AND DISRAELI 1 33 

So little had he spared his own friends in vote, speech, or 
writing that he may be acquitted of having dreamt of 
becoming their immediate leader. But Peel had laid himself 
open. The Premier's policy, supported as it was by his 
political pupils and the Liberal Opposition, Disraeli knew 
to be practically irresistible. He was therefore spared 
the necessity of moderating his own language. At least 
he could avenge his party and punish what he could not 
prevent. It was his pride when he made an attack to single 
out the most dangerous antagonist. Sir Robert Peel was 
the most commanding member of the House of Commons, 
and the most powerful oratorical athlete. 

Disraeli's speeches during Peel's Ministry and the effects 
which they produced can be touched but superficially in a 
narrative so brief as this, but they formed the turning-point 
of his public life. His assaults when he began were treated 
with petulant contempt, but his fierce counter-hits soon 
roused attention to them. The Liberals were entertained 
to see the Conservative chief dared and smitten by one of 
his own followers. The country members felt an indignant 
satisfaction at the deserved chastisement of their betrayer. 
The cheers in Parliament were echoed outside the walls 
and rang to the farthest corner of the Continent. With 
malicious skill Disraeli touched one after the other the 
weak points of a character essentially great but superficially 
vulnerable. Like Laertes he anointed his point, but the 
venom lay in the truth of what he said, and the suffering 
which he inflicted was the more poignant because adminis- 
tered by a hand which Peel had unfortunately despised. 
Disraeli was displaying for the first time the peculiar epi- 
grammatic keenness which afterwards so much distinguished 
him, and the skill with which he could drive his arrows 



134 LORD BEACONSFIELD 

through the joints in the harness. Any subject gave him 
an opening. Peel supposed that he had rebuked and 
silenced him by quoting in a dignified tone Canning's lines 
upon ' A Candid Friend.' The allusion was dangerous, for 
Peel's conduct to Canning had not been above reproach. 
Disraeli took an occasion when the general policy of the 
Ministry was under discussion to deliver himself in his 
clear, cold, impassive manner of a few sentences which hit 
exactly the temper of the House. Peel was generally ac- 
cused of having stolen the Liberal policy. The right 
honourable gentleman, he said, had caught the Whigs bath- 
ing and had walked away with their clothes. Lie had tamed 
the shrew of Liberalism by her own tactics. He was the 
' political Petruchio who had outbid them all.' Then came 
the sting. Peel had a full memory, and vv^as rather proud of 
the readiness with which he could introduce quotations. 
Disraeli first touched his vanity by complimenting him on 
the success with which he used such weapons, ' partly because 
he seldom quoted a passage which had not previously re- 
ceived the meed of Parliamentary approbation, partly because 
his quotations were so happy. . . . We all admire Canning,' 
he said ; ' we all, or at least most of us, deplore his untimely 
end. We sympathised with him in his fierce struggle with 
supreme prejudice and sublime mediocrity, with inveterate 
foes and with candid friends. Mr. Canning! and quoted by 
the right honourable gentleman. The theme, the poet, the 
speaker ! — what a felicitous combination I ' 

The shaft which Peel had lightly launched was returned 
into his own breast and quivered there. The House of 
Commons, bored v/ith dulness, delights in an unusual stroke 
of artistic skill. The sarcasm was received with cheers the 
worse to bear because while the Radicals laughed loud Peel's 



PEEL AND DISRAELI 1 35 

own side did not repress an approving murmur. He was like 
the bull in the Spanish arena when the chidos plant their darts 
upon his shoulders. ' He hoped,' he said, ' that the honour- 
able member, having discharged the accumulated virus of 
the last week, now felt more at his ease ; ' but the barb had 
gone to the quick, and Peel, however proudly he controlled 
himself, was the most sensitive of men. 

The tormentor left him no rest. A few days later came 
Mr. Miles's motion for the application of surplus revenue to 
the relief of agriculture. Peel, when in opposition, had argued 
for the justice of this proposal. In office he found objec- 
tions to it ; and Disraeli told his friends that they must not 
be impatient with Sir Robert Peel. ' There is no doubt,' he 
said, ' a difference in the right honourable gentleman's de- 
meanour as leader of the Opposition and as Minister of the 
Crown. But that is the old story. You must not contrast tco 
strongly the hours of courtship with the years of possession. 
I remember the right honourable: gentleman's Protection 
speeches. They were the best speeches I ever heard. But 
we know in all these cases when the beloved object has 
ceased to charm it is vain to appeal to the feelings.' 

Sidney Herbert had spoken of the agricultural members 
as whining to Parliament at every recurrence of temporary 
distress. Disraeli again struck at Peel, dealing Sidney 
Herbert an insolent cut by the way. 

' The right honourable gentleman,' he continued, ' being 
compelled to interfere, sends down his valet, who says in the 
genteelest manner, " We can have no whining here." But, 
sir, that is exactly the case of the great agricultural interest, 
that beauty which everyone vrooed and one deluded. Pro- 
tection appears to me to be in the same condition that 
Protestantism was in 1828. For my part, if we are to have 



136 LORD BEACONSFIELD 

Free Trade, I, who honour genius, prefer that such measures 
should be proposed by the honourable member for Stockport 
[Mr. Cobden] than by one who, though skilful in Parlia- 
mentary manoeuvres, has tampered with the generous con- 
fidence of a great people and a great party. For myself, 
I care not what may, be the result. Dissolve, if you please, 
the Parliament, whom you have betrayed, and appeal to the 
people, who I believe mistrust you. For me there remains 
this at least, the opportunity for expressing thus publicly 
my belief that a Conservative Government is an organised 
hypocrisy.' 

This speech became famous. O'Connell, who, like 
Disraeli himself, bore no malice, when asked his opinion of 
it said it was all excellent except the peroration, and that 
was matchless. Disraeli, who had calmly watched the effect 
of his assaults, told his sister that ' Peel was stunned and 
stupefied, lost his head, and vacillating between silence and 
spleen, spoke much and weakly, assuring me that I had not 
hurt his feelings, that he would never reciprocate person- 
alities, having no venom, &c. &c.' 

A wasp which you cannot kill buzzing round your face 
and stinging when it has a chance will try the patience of 
the wisest. The Maynooth grant might have been a safe 
subject, for no one had advocated justice to Ireland more 
strongly than Disraeli ; but he chose to treat it as a bid 
for the Irish vote. He called Peel ' a great Parliamentary 
middleman,' swindling both the parties that he professed 
to serve, and with deadly ingenuity he advised the Roman 
Catholic members to distrust a man ' whose bleak shade had 
fallen on the sunshine of their hopes for a quarter of a 
century.' 

Driven beside himself at last, either on this or on some 



THE CORN LAWS 1 37 

similar occasion, I have been assured that Peel forgot his 
dignity and asked a distinguished friend to carry a challenge 
from him to his reviler. The friend, unwilling to give 
Disraeli such a triumph and more careful of Peel's reputa- 
tion than Peel himself, did not merely refuse, but threatened, 
if the matter was pursued farther, to inform the police.^ 

Disraeli asked Lord John Russell if he was not weary 
of being dragged at the triumphal car of a conqueror who 
had not conquered him in fair fight. ' Habitual perfidy,' 
he said, was not high policy of state.' He invited the Whig 
leader to assist him ' in dethroning the dynasty of deception 
and putting an end to the intolerable yoke of official 
despotism and Parliamentary imposture.' 

Though the Free-Traders were revolutionising the tariff 
old-fashioned statesmen on both sides still hesitated at the 
entire abohtion of the Corn Laws. It had been long 
assumed that without some protection the soil of England 
must fall out of cultivation. The Corn Law Leaguers were 
prepared even for that consummation, although they denied 
the probability of it. Disraeli, laying aside his personalities, 
showed in a noble passage that when he chose he could 
rise to the level of a great subject. He said — 

'The leading spirits on the benches I see before me 
have openly declared their opinion that if there were not 
an acre of land cultivated in England it would not be the 
worse for this country. You have all of you in open chorus 
announced your object to be the monopoly of the commerce 
of the universe, to make this country the workshop of the 
world. Your system and ours are exactly contrary. We invite 
union ; we believe that national prosperity can only be pro- 
duced by the prosperity of all classes. You prefer to remain 
1 I do not mention this story without careful enquiry. 



138 LORD BEACONSFIELD 

in isolated splendour and solitary magnificence. But, 
believe me, I speak not as your enemy when I say it will 
be an exception to the principles which seem hitherto to 
have ruled society if you can maintain the success at which 
you aim without the possession of that permanence and 
stability which the territorial principle alone can afford. 
Although you may for a moment flourish after their de- 
struction, although your ports may be filled with shipping, 
your factories smoke on every plain, and your forges flame 
in every city, I see no reason why you should form an ex- 
ception to that which the page of history has mournfully 
recorded, that you should not fade like Tyrian dye and 
moulder like the Venetian palaces.' 

The great Whig peers, who were the largest of the ter- 
ritorial magnates, were not yet prepared to cut their own 
throats. Lord John was still for his eight-shilling duty. 
Peel was for a sliding scale which would lower the duty 
without extinguishing it. But, as Disraeli observed, ' there is 
nothing in which the power of circumstance is more evident 
than in politics. They baffle the forethought of statesmen 
and control even the apparently inflexible laws of national 
development and decay.' In the midst of the debate on 
the customs duties came the Irish famine, and the Corn 
Laws in any shape were doomed. Protection might have 
been continued in a moderate form if this catastrophe had 
not occurred, provided the lords of the soil could have 
reverted to the practice of their forefathers and looked on 
their rents as the revenue of their estates, to be expended 
on the welfare of their dependents. But it was not in 
them and could not come out of them. On the top of dis- 
tress in England followed the destruction of the sole means 
of support which the recklessness of the Irish proprietors 



THE CORN LAWS 1 39 

had left to five millions of peasants. Sir Robert Peel in- 
formed his Cabinet that the duties on grain must be sus- 
pended by order of Council, and that if once removed they 
could never be reimposed. The Cabinet split ; Lord Stanley 
left him. He felt himself that if the Corn Laws were to be 
repealed he was not the statesman who ought to do it. He 
resigned, but he could not escape his fate. Lord John 
Russell could not form a Ministry and ' handed the poisoned 
chalice back to Peel,' w^ho was forced to return and fulfil 
his ungracious office. He announced at the opening of the 
session of 1846 that the debates had convinced him not only 
of the impolicy but of the injustice of the Corn Laws, and 
he warned his followers that if they defeated him on a ques- 
tion of their personal interests ' an ancient monarchy and a 
proud aristocracy might not be found compatible with a 
reformed House of Commons.' The intimation and the 
threat w^ere received with silent dismay. Disraeli alone was 
able to give voice to their indignation, and in the style ot 
which he had made himself such a master he said that he 
at least was not one of the converts ; he had been sent to 
the House to advocate protection, and to protection he 
adhered. In bitter and memorable words he compared 
Peel to the Turkish admiral who had been sent out to 
fight Mehemet Ali, and had carried his fleet into the 
harbour at Alexandria, alleging as his excuse that he had 
himself an objection to war, that the struggle was useless, 
and that he had accepted the command only to betray his 
master. Up to this time the Tory party had but half liked 
Disraeli. Many of his utterances in the House and out of 
it had a communistic taint upon them. Now, forlorn and 
desperate, a helpless flock deserted by the guardian whom 
they trusted, they cheered him with an enthusiasm which is 



140 LORD BEACONSFIELD 

only given to an accepted chief. ' So keen was the feehng 
and so spurring the point of honour that a flock deserted 
by their shepherds should not be led, as was intended, to 
the slaughter-house without a struggle, that a stimulus to 
exertion was given which had been rarely equalled in the 
House of Commons.' 

Lord George Bentinck sold his racehorses and converted 
himself into a politician with a vigour of which no one had 
suspected him of being the possessor. Bentinck in youth 
had been Canning's secretary. He was then a moderate 
Whig, but had deserted politics for the turf. He was roused 
out of his amusements by the menaced overthrow of the 
principles in which he had been bred. His sense of 
honour was outraged by this second instance of what he 
regarded as Peel's double-dealing, and the Tories, whose 
pride would have been wounded by submitting avowedly 
to be led by an adventurer, were reconciled to Disraeli 
as second in command while they had Bentinck for his 
coadjutor and nominal chief. After the Peelites had sepa- 
rated from them they were still a powerful minority. If 
parties could but be forced back into their natural positions 
'they could still exercise the legitimate influence of an 
Opposition in criticising details and insisting on modifica- 
tions.' Free trade ' could be better contended against when 
openly and completely avowed than when brought forward 
by one who had obtained power by professing his hostility 
to it.^ They were betrayed and they had a right to be 
angry ; for Peel only, as parties stood, could carry repeal 
complete, and it was they who had given Peel his power. 

Complaint, resistance were equally vain. The Bill for 
the repeal of the Corn Laws went through its various stages. 
On the third reading on May 15, when the battle was practi- 



THE CORN LAWS I4t 

cally over, Disraeli again delivered a speech in which, dis- 
pensing with his epigrams and sarcasms, he displayed the 
qualities of a great and far-seeing statesman. 

' I know,' he said, ' that there are many who believe that 
the time has gone by when one can appeal to those high 
and honest impulses that were once the mainstay and the 
main element of the English character. I know, sir, that 
we appeal to a people .debauched by public gambling, 
stimulated and encouraged by an inefficient and short- 
sighted Minister. I know that the public mind is polluted 
by economic fancies, a depraved desire that the rich may 
become richer without the interference of industry and toil. 
I know that all confidence in public men is lost. But, 
sir, I have faith in the primitive and enduring elements of 
the English character. It may be vain now in the midnight 
of their intoxication to tell them that there will be an 
awakening of bitterness. It may be idle now in the spring- 
tide of their economic frenzy to warn them that there may 
be an ebb of trouble. But the dark and inevitable hour 
will arrive. Then when their spirit is softened by mis- 
fortune they will recur to those principles which made 
England great, and which, in our belief, alone can keep 
England great. Then too, perhaps, they may remember, 
not with unkindness, those who, betrayed and deserted, 
were neither ashamed nor afraid to struggle for the good 
old cause, the cause with which are associated principles 
the most popular, sentiments the most entirely national, 
the cause of labour, the cause of the people, the cause of 
England.' 

. The Bill passed both Houses, the noble Lords preferring 
their coronets to their convictions. The Conservative de- 
• feat was complete and irreparable. ' Vengeance, therefore 



142 LORD BEACONSFIELD 

had succeeded in most breasts to more sanguine sentiments ; 
the field was lost, but at any rate there was retribution 
for those who betrayed it.' The desire of vengeance was 
human. Perhaps there was a feeling, more respectable, that 
if Peel was allowed to triumph some other institution might 
be attacked on similar lines ; but it cannot be said that 
the occasion which the Conservatives used to punish him 
was particularly creditable to them. Ireland was starving, 
and Ireland was mutinous. Ordinary law proving, as usual, 
unequal to the demand upon it. Peel was obliged to bring 
in one of the too familiar Coercion Bills. Both parties 
when in office are driven to this expedient. The Liberals 
when in opposition generally denounce it. The Conserva- 
tives, as believing in order and authority, are in the habit of 
supporting the Administration, even if it be the Adminis- 
tration of their rivals. However discontented Peel might 
know his followers to be, he had no reason to expect 
that they would desert him on such a ground as this. His 
Coercion Bill passed the Lords without difficulty. It was 
read a first time in the House of Commons in an interval 
in the Corn Laws debate. A Conservative Opposition at 
such a crisis was at least factious, for there was danger 
of actual rebellion in Ireland. It was factious and it was 
not easy to organise. The opportunity was not a good 
one, but if it was allowed to escape a second was not 
likely to offer. Disraeli was a free- ance, and had opposed 
Coercion before. Lord George had committed himself by 
his vote on the first reading. But he had a private grudge 
of his own against Peel. They resolved to try what could 
be done, and called a meeting of the Conservative party. 
They found their friends cold. 'There is no saying 
how our men will go,' Lord George said to Disraeli. 



PEEL AND CANNING I43 

' It may be perilous, but if we lose this chance the traitor 
will escape. I will make the plunge.' Lord George's avowed 
ground was that he could no longer trust Peel and ' must 
therefore refuse to give him unconstitutional powers.' On 
the merits he would probably have been defeated ; but 
the main point was lost sight of in the personal quarrel 
to which the debate gave rise. Peel's conduct on the 
Corn Laws had revived the recollection of his treatment 
of Catholic Emancipation. When Canning, in 1827, was 
proposing to deal with it Peel had refused to join his 
Ministry on this avowed ground, and Canning's death 
was popularly connected with his supposed mortification 
at his failure on that occasion. Disraeli, as we have 
seen, had given Peel one sharp wound by referring to this 
episode in his career. Lord George dealt him another and 
a worse. The object was to prove that Peel's treachery was 
an old habit with him. He insisted that while he had 
refused to support Emancipation if introduced by Canning 
in 1827 he had himself changed his opinion about it two 
years before, and that he had himself heard him avow the 
alteration of his sentiments. 

' We are told now,' Lord George said, speaking on the 
Coercion Bill—' we hear it from the Minister himself— that he 
thinks there is nothing humiHating in the course which he 
has pursued, that it would have been base and dishonest in 
him, and inconsistent with his duty to his Sovereign, if he 
had concealed his opinions after he had changed them ; but 
I have hved long enough, I am sorry to say, to remember 
the time when the right honourable Baronet chased and 
hunted an illustrious relative of mine to death, and when 
he stated that he could not support his Ministry because, as 
leading member of it, he was likely to forward the question 



144 LORD BEACON SFIELD ' 

of Catholic Emancipation. That was the conduct of the 
right honourable Baronet in 1827, but in 1829 he told the 
House he had changed his opinion on that subject in 1825 
and had communicated that change of opinion to the Earl 
of Liverpool.' ' Peel,' he said, ' stood convicted by his own 
words of base and dishonest conduct, conduct inconsistent 
with the duty of a Minister to his Sovereign.' ' He ' (Lord 
George) ' was satisfied that the country would not forgive 
twice the same crime in the same man. A second time 
had the right honourable Baronet insulted the honour of 
Parliament and of the country, and it was now time that 
atonement should be made to the betrayed constituencies 
of the Empire.' 

This had nothing to do with the Coercion Bill, and the 
motive of a charge so vindictive could only have been to 
irritate passions which did not need any further stimulus. 
The manners of Parliament are not supposed to have im- 
proved in recent periods, but the worst scenes in our own 
day are tame reproductions of the violence of forty years 
ago. The House of Commons was then the real voice of 
the country, and the anger of the Conservatives was the 
anger of half a nation. Lord George's charge was based on 
a speech alleged to have been made in the House itself. 
It was therefore absurd to accuse Peel of secret treachery. 
Any treachery which there might have been was open and 
avowed. But did Peel ever make such a speech ? He 
rose as if stunned by the noise, and said peremptorily that 
the accusation was destitute of foundation. ' It was as foul 
a calumny as a vindictive spirit ever directed against a public 
man.' The House adjourned in perplexity and astonish- 
ment. Lord George was positive ; he had been himself 
present, he said, when the words were spoken. The question 



PEEL AND CANNING I45 

became more perplexed on reference to the reports in the 
newspapers. The incriminated passage was not in the 
report in ' Hansard,' which had been revised by Sir Robert ; 
but it was found in the ' Mirror of ParHament,' and also in 
the ' Times.' It was discovered also that Sir Edward 
Knatchbull had drawn attention to Peel's words at the 
time, and had enquired why he had not supported Canning 
if, as he alleged, he had changed his mind as early as 1825. 
This seemed decisive. Lord George could not speak 
again by the rules of the House, and handed his authorities 
to Disraeli to use for him when the debate was renewed. 
Disraeli was not likely to fail with such materials, and 
delivered an invective to which the fiercest of his previous 
onslaughts was like the cooing of a dove. He was speaking 
as an advocate. It does not follow that he believed all he 
said, but the object was to make Peel suffer, and in this he 
undoubtedly succeeded. Peel made a lame defence, and 
the matter was never completely cleared up. Sir Edward 
KnatchbulFs speech could not be explained away. The 
House, however, was willing to be satisfied. Lord John 
Russell, winding up the discussion and speaking for the 
Opposition, accepted Peel's denial, declaring that both on 
Catholic Emancipation and on the Corn Laws he had done 
good service to his country, but agreed that on both occa- 
sions he had turned round upon his pledges and ought not 
to be surprised if his friends were angry with him. Disraeli, 
in telling the story afterwards in his Life of Lord George, 
said that the truth was probably this : ' that Peel's change 
on the Emancipation question had not been a sudden 
resolve — that he had probably weighed the arguments for 
and agains for a considerable time, and that having to 
make a complicated and embarrassing statement when he 

L 



146 LORD BEACONSFIELD 

announced that he had gone round, and to refer by dates to 
several periods as to his contingent conduct, had conveyed 
a meaning to the House different from what he had in- 
tended.' Thus looked at his conduct might be explained 
to his entire vindication. Disraeli, however, still insisted 
that both Bentinck and himself had been also right in 
bringing the charge. The point before the House was 
Peel's general conduct. He had twice betrayed the party 
who had trusted his promises. Lord George said that to 
denounce men who had broken their pledges was a public 
duty. ' If the country could not place faith in the pledges 
of their representatives the authority of the House of 
Commons would fall.' However that might be the storm 
decided the wavering minds of the Tory army, and with it 
the fate of Sir Robert Peel. In voting against the Coercion 
Bill they would be voting against their own principles, and 
the utmost efforts were made to retain them in their allegi- 
ance. Persuasion and menace were alike unavailing. ' The 
gentlemen of England,' of whom it had once been Sir 
Robert's proudest boast to be the leader, declared against 
him. He was beaten by an overpowering majority, and 
his career as an English Minister was closed. 

Disraeli's had been the hand which dethroned him, and 
to Disraeli himself, after three years of anarchy and un- 
certainty, descended the task of again building together the 
shattered ruins of the Conservative party. Very unwillingly 
they submitted to the unwelcome necessity. Canning and 
the elder Pitt had both been called adventurers, but they 
had birth and connection, and they were at least English- 
men. Disraeli had risen out of a despised race ; he had 
never sued for their favours ; he had voted and spoken 
as he pleased, whether they'^liked jt or not. He had ad- 



FALL OF PEEL 147 

vocated in spite of them the admission of the Jews to 
Parhament, and many of them might think that in his 
novels he had held the Peerage up to hatred. He was 
without Court favour, and had hardly a powerful friend 
except Lord Lyndhurst. He had never been tried on the 
lower steps of the official ladder. He w^as young too — only 
forty-two — after all the stir that he had made. There was 
no example of a rise so sudden under such conditions. 
But the Tory party had accepted and cheered his services, 
and he stood out alone among them as a debater of superior 
power. Their own trained men had all deserted them. 
Lord George remained for a year or two as nominal chief : 
but Lord George died ; the Conservatives could only con- 
solidate themselves under a real leader, and Disraeli was 
the single person that they had who was equal to the 
situation. Not a man on either side in the House was 
more than his match in single combat. He had overthrown 
Peel and succeeded to Peel's honours. 

His situation was now changed. So far he had remained 
the Tory Radical which he had first professed himself. He 
had his own views, and he had freely enunciated them, 
whether they were practical or only theoretic. No doubt 
he had thought that use might have been made of the 
reaction of 1841 to show the working men of England that 
the Tories were their real friends. He knew that the gulf 
which w^as dividing the rich from the poor was a danger to 
the Constitution. But, instead of far-reaching social legis- 
lation, Parliament had decided for the immediate relief of 
cheap bread. The country was committed to laissez-faire 
and liberty, and no reversion to earlier principles was now 
possible until laissez-faire had been tired out and the 
consequences of it tasted and digested. As an outsider he 

L 2 



148 LORD_ BEACONSFIELD 

would have been still free to express his own opinions ; as 
the leader of a party he had now to consider the disposition 
of his followers and the practical exigencies of the situation. 
AH that was for the present possible was to moderate the 
pace of what was called Progress, keep the break upon the 
wheels, and prevent an overturn in the descent of the 
incline. In the life of nations the periods of change are 
brief; the normal condition of things is permanence and 
stability. The bottom would be reached at last, and the 
appetite for innovation would be satiated. 



DISRAELI THE CONSERVATIVE LEADER 1 49 



CHAPTER X 

Disraeli as Leader of the Opposition— Effects of Free Trade — • 
Scientific discoveries — Steam — Railroads — Commercial revolu- 
tion—Unexampled prosperity— Twenty-five years of Liberal gov- 
ernment — Disraeli's opinions and general attitude — Party govern- 
ment and the conditions of it — Power of an Opposition Leader — 
Never abused by Disraeli for party interests — Special instances — 
The coup d'etat — The Crimean War — The Indian Mutiny — The 
Civil War in America — Remarkable warning against playing with 
the Constitution. 

Mr. Disraeli's career has been traced in detail from his 
birth to the point which he had now reached. Hence- 
forward it is neither necessary nor possible to follow his 
actions with the same minuteness. The outer side of them 
is within the memory of most of us. The inner side can 
only be known when his private papers are given to the 
world. For twenty-five years he led the Conservative 
Opposition in the House of Commons, varied with brief 
intervals of power. He was three times Chancellor of the 
Exchequer under Lord Derby — in 1852, in 1858-9, and 
again in 1867 — but he was in office owing rather to Liberal 
dissensions than to recovered strength on his own side. 
Being in a minority he was unable to initiate any definite 
policy ; nor if the opportunity had been offered him would 
he have attempted to reverse the commercial policy of Peel. 
The country had decided for Free Trade, and a long Trade 
Wind of commercial prosperity seemed to indicate that the 



150 LORD BEACONSFIELD 

Manchester school had been right after all. On this ques- 
tion the verdict had gone against him, and the opinion 
of the constituencies remained against him. More than all, 
what Cobden had prophesied came to pass. Science and 
skill came to the support of enterprise. Railroads cheapened 
transport and annihilated distance. The ocean lost its 
terrors and became an easy and secure highway, and 
England, with her boundless resources, became more than 
ever the ocean's lord. Exports and imports grew with 
fabulous rapidity, and the prosperity which Disraeli had 
not denied might be the immediate effect exceeded the 
wildest hopes of the Corn Law League. Duty after duty 
was abandoned, and still the revenue increased. The 
people multiplied like bees, and yet wages rose. New 
towns sprang out of the soil like mushrooms, and the happy 
owners of it found their incomes doubled without effort 
of their own. Even the farmers prospered, for time was 
necessary, before America, and Russia, and India could pull 
down the market price of corn. Meat rose, farm produce 
of all kinds rose, and rent rose along with it, and the price 
of land. The farm labourer had his advance of a weekly 
shilling or two, and the agricultural interest, which had 
been threatened vv^ith ruin, throve as it had never thriven 
before. Althea's horn was flowing over with an exuberance 
of plenty, and all classes adopted more expensive habits, 
believing that the supply was now inexhaustible. The lords 
of the land themselves shook off their panic, and were heard 
to say that ' Free Trade v>\as no such a bad thing after all.' 

When things are going well with Englishmen they never 
look beyond the moment. 

Pride in their port, defiance in their eye, 
We see the lords of human kind go by. 



FREE TRADE AND PROGRESS I5I 

Our countrymen of the last generation had confidence in 
themselves. They were advancing by leaps and bounds, 
and the advance was to continue for ever. Carlyle told 
them that their ' unexampled prosperity ' was in itself no 
such beautiful thing, and was perhaps due to special cir- 
cumstances which would not continue. Carlyle was laughed 
at as a pessimist. Yet as time goes on a suspicion does 
begin to be felt that both he and Disraeli were not as wrong 
as was supposed. The anticipated fall in wheat, though 
long delayed, has come at last j at last the land is falling out 
of cultivation, and the rents go back once more, and the 
labourers have lost their extra shillings. The English 
farmer is swamped at last under the competition of the 
outer world, and the peasantry, who were the manhood of 
the country, are shrinking in numbers. The other nations, 
who were to have opened their ports after our example, have 
preferred to keep them closed to protect their own manu- 
factures and supply their ov/n necessities. 

Chimneys still smoke and engines clank, and the volume 
of our foreign trade does not diminish, but if the volume 
is maintained the profits fall, and our articles must be 
produced cheaper and ever cheaper if we are to hold our 
ground. As employment fails in the country districts the 
people stream into the towns. This great London of ours 
annually stretches its borders. Five millions of men and 
women, more than the population of all England at the 
time of the Commonwealth, are now collected within the 
limits of the Bills of Mortality. Once our English artisans 
were famous throughout Europe. They were spread among 
the country villages. Each workman was complete of his 
kind, in his way an artist ; his work was an education to 
him as a man. Now he is absorbed in the centres of 



152 LORD BEACONSFIELD 

industry and is part of a machine. In the division of 
labour a human being spends his hfe in making pins' heads 
or legs of chairs, or single watch wheels, or feeding engines 
which work instead of him. Such activities do not feed his 
mind or raise his character, and such mind as he has left 
he feeds at the beer shop and music hall. Nay, in the rage 
for cheapness his work demoralises him. He is taught to 
scamp his labour and pass off bad materials for good. The 
carpenter, the baker, the smith, the mason learns so to do 
his work that it may appear what it professes to be, while 
the appearance is delusive. In the shop and manufactory 
he finds adulteration regarded as a legitimate form of compe- 
tition. The various occupations of the people have become 
a discipline of dishonesty, and the demand for cheapness is 
corroding the national character. 

Disraeli as a cool looker-on foresaw how it would be, 
but it was his fate to steer the vessel in the stream when it 
was running with the impetuosity of self-confidence. He 
could not stem a torrent, and all that he could do was to 
moderate the extent of its action. Only he refused to call the 
tendency of things Progress. ' Progress whence and pro- 
gress whither ? ' he would ask. The only human progress 
worth calling by the name is progress in virtue, justice, 
courage, uprightness, love of country beyond love of our- 
selves. True, as everyone was saying, it was impossible to 
go back ; but why ? To go back is easy if we have missed 
our way on the road upwards. It is impossible only when 
the road is downhill. 

His function was to wait till the fruit had ripened 
which was to follow on such brilliant blossom, and to learn 
what the event would teach him; to save what he could 
of the old institutions, to avoid unnecessary interference, 



PARTY GOVERNMENT I 53 

and forward any useful measures of detail for which oppor- 
tunity might offer : meantime to watch his opponents and 
take fair advantage of their mistakes provided he did not 
injure by embarrassing them the real interests of the country. 
Party government in England is the least promising in theory 
of all methods yet adopted for a reasonable management 
of human affairs. In form it is a disguised civil war, and 
a civil war which can never end, because the strength of the 
antagonists is periodically recruited at the enchanted fountain 
of a general election. Each section in the State affects to 
regard its rivals as public enemies, while it admits that their 
existence is essential to the Constitution ; it misrepresents 
their actions, thwarts their proposals even if it may know 
them to be good, and by all means, fair or foul, endeavours 
to supplant them in the favour of the people. No nation 
could endure such a system if it was uncontrolled by 
modifying influences. The rule till lately has been to sus- 
pend the antagonism in matters of Imperial moment, and 
to abstain from factious resistance when resistance cannot 
be effectual in the transaction of ordinary business. But 
within these limits and independent of particular measures 
each party proceeds on the principle that the tenure of office 
by its opponents is an evil in itself, and that no legitimate 
opportunity of displacing them ought to be neglected. That 
both sides shall take their turn at the helm is essential if 
the system is to continue. If they are to share the powers 
of the State they must share its patronage, to draw talent 
into their ranks. The art of administration can be learnt 
only by practice ; young Tories as w^ell as young Whigs 
must have their chance of acquiring their lessons. No 
party can hold together unless encouraged by occasional 
victory. Thus the functions of an Opposition chief are 



154 LORD BEACONSFIELD 

at once delicate and difficult. He must be careful m quid 
detriinenti capiat Respublica through hasty action of his own. 
He must consider, on the other hand, the legitimate interests 
of his friends. As a member of a short-lived administration 
once bluntly expressed to me, ' you must blood the noses 
of your hounds,' but you must not for a party advantage 
embarrass a Government to the general injury of the 
Empire. 

Under such circumstances the details of past Parlia- 
mentary sessions are for the most part wearisome and unreal. 
The opposing squadrons are arranged as if for battle, exhorted 
night after night in eloquence so vivid that the nation's salva- 
tion might seem at stake. The leaders cross swords. The 
newspapers spread the blaze through town and country, and 
all on subjects of such trifling moment that they are forgotten 
v.'hen an engagement is over, the result of which is known 
and perhaps determined beforehand. When the division is 
taken, the rival champions consume their cigars together in 
the smoking-room and discuss the next Derby or the latest 
scandal. Questions are raised which wise men on both 
sides would willingly let alone, because neither party can 
allow its opponents an opportunity of gaining popular favour. 
The arguments are insincere. The adulterations of trade 
pass into Parliament and become adulterations of human 
speech. It is a price which we pay for political freedom, and 
a price which tends annually to rise. Thus it is rightly felt 
to be unfair to remember too closely the words or senti- 
ments let fall in past debates. The modern politician has 
often to oppose what in his heart he believes to be useful, 
and defend what he does not wholly approve. He has to 
affect to be in desperate earnest when he is talking of things 
which are not worth a second's serious thought. Everyone 



DISRAELI AS OPPOSITION LEADER 15 



knows this and everyone allows for it. The gravest states- 
man of the century could be proved as uncertain as a 
weathercock, lightly to be moved as thistle-down, if every 
word which he utters in Parliament or on platform is 
recorded against him as seriously meant. 

The greater part of our Parliamentary history during the 
twenty-five years of Disraeli's leadership of the Tory Opposi- 
tion in the House of Commons is of this character. The 
nation was going its own v/ay — multiplying its numbers, 
piling up its ingots, adding to its scientific knowledge, and 
spreading its commerce over the globe. Parliament was 
talking, since talk was its business, about subjects the very 
names of which are dead echoes of vanished unrealities. 
It may be claimed for Disraeli that he discharged his sad 
duties during all this time with as little insincerity as the cir- 
cumstances allowed, that he was never wilfully obstructive, 
.and that while he was dexterous as a party chief he conducted 
himself always with dignity and fairness. It cost him less 
than it would have cost most men, because being not deeply 
concerned he could judge the situation v/ith coolness and 
impartiality. He knew that it was not the interest of the 
Conservative party to struggle prematurely for office, and he 
had a genuine and loyal concern for the honour and great- 
ness of the country. Any proposals which he considered 
good he helped forward with earnestness and ability — pro- 
posals for shortening the hours of labour, for the protection of 
children in the factories, for the improvement of the dwelling- 
houses of the poor. He may be said to have brought the 
Jews into Parliament a quarter of a century before they would 
otherwise have been admitted there, for the Conservatives 
left to themselves would probably have opposed their ad- 
mission to the end. He could accomplish little, but he 



156 ' LORD BEACONSFIELD 

prevented harm. The interesting intervals of the long dreary 
time were when the monotony was broken in upon by in- 
cidents from without — Continental revolutions, Crimean 
campaigns, Indian mutinies, civil wars in America, and such 
like, when false steps might have swept this country into 
the whirlpools, and there was need for care and foresight. 
On all or most of these occasions he signalised himself 
not only by refraining from taking advantage of them to 
embarrass the Government, but by a loftiness of thought 
and language unfortunately not too common in the House 
of Commons. 

The coup d''etat of Louis Napoleon did not deserve to 
be favourably received in England. The restoration of a 
military Government in France alarmed half of us by a fear 
of the revival of the Napoleonic traditions. The overthrow 
of a Constitution exasperated the believers in liberty. All 
alike were justly shocked by the treachery and violence 
with which the Man of December had made his way to the 
throne. The newspapers and popular orators, accustomed 
to canvass and criticise the actions of statesmen at home, 
forgot that prudence suggested reticence about the affairs of 
others with whom we had no right to interfere. The army 
was master of France, and to speak of its chief in such terms 
as those in which historians describe a Sylla or a Marius was 
not the way to maintain peaceful relations with dangerous 
neighbours. Neither the writers nor the speakers wished for 
war with France. They wished only for popularity as the 
friends of justice and humanity ; but war might easily have 
been the consequence unless pen and tongue could be taught 
caution. Disraeli applied the bit in a powerful speech in 
the House. He had been acquainted with Louis Napoleon 
in the old days at Lady Blessington's. He had no liking 



THE CRIMEAN WAR 157- 

for him and no belief in him ; but he reminded the House 
and he reminded the nation that it was not for us to dictate 
how France was to be governed, and that the language, so 
freely used might provoke a formidable and even just re- 
sentment. 

The Crimean war he was unable to prevent, but as 
good a judge as Cobden believed that if Disraeli and Lord 
Derby had not been turned out of office in 1852 they would 
have prevented it, and a million lives and a hundred millions 
of English money, w^hich that business cost, need not have 
been sacrificed over a struggle which events proved to be 
useless. Much was to be said for a policy which would have 
frankly met and accepted the Emperor Nicholas's overtures 
to Sir Hamilton Seymour. If a joint pressure of all the 
European Powers had been brought to bear on Turkey, 
internal reforms could have been forced upon her, and 
preparation could have been made peacefully for the 
disappearance, ultimately inevitable, of the Turks out of 
Europe. If the state of public opinion forbade this (and 
Disraeli himself would certainly never have adopted such a 
course) something was to be said also for adhering firmly 
from the first to the traditionary dogmas on the maintenance 
of the integrity of the Turkish Empire, and this the Conser- 
vatives were prepared to do. Nothing at all was to be said 
for hesitation and waiting upon events. The Tzar was 
deceived into supposing that w^hile we talked we meant 
nothing, and we drifted into a war of which the only direct 
result was a waste of money which, if wisely used, might have 
drained the Bog of Allen, turned the marshes of the Shannon 
into pasture ground, and have left in Ireland some traces of 
English rule to w^hich we could look with satisfaction. 

The indirect consequences of fatuities are sometimes 



158 LORD BEACONSFIELD 

worse than their immediate effects. It was known over the 
world that England, France, Turkey, and Italy had combined 
to endeavour to crush Russia, and had succeeded only in 
capturing half of a single Russian city. The sepoy army 
heard of our failures, and the centenary of the battle of Plassy 
was signalised by the Great Mutiny. The rebellion was splen- 
didly met. It was practically confined to the army itself, and 
over the largest part of the peninsula the general population 
remained loyal ; but the murder of the officers, the cruelties 
to the women and children, and the detailed barbarities 
which were paraded in the newspapers, drove the English 
people into fury. Carried away by generous but unvrise 
emotion, they clamoured for retaliatory severities, which, if 
inflicted, would have been fatal to our reputation and 
eventually perhaps to the Indian Empire. Disraeh's pas- 
sionless nature was moved to a warmth which was rare with 
him. Such feelings, he said, were no less than ' heinous.' 
We boasted that we ruled India in the interests of humanity ; 
were we to stain our name by copying the ferocities of our 
revolted subjects? 

His influence vv^as no less fortunately exerted at the 
more dangerous crisis of the American civil war. On all 
occasions English instinct inclines to take the weaker side, 
but for many reasons there was in England a particular and 
wide- spread inclination for the South. There was a general 
feeling that the American colonies had revolted against 
ourselves ; if they quarrelled, and a minority of them desired 
independence, the minority had as good a right to shake off 
the North as the thirteen original States to shake off the 
mother country. The North in trying to coerce the South 
was contradicting its own principle. Professional politicians 
even among the Liberals were of opinion that the trans- 



CIVIL WAR IN AMERICA 1 59 

atlantic republic was dangerously strong, that it was disturb- 
ing the balance of power, and that a division or dissolution 
of it would be of general advantage. Those among us who 
disliked republican institutions, and did not wish them to 
succeed, rejoiced at their apparent failure, and would willingly 
have lent their help to make it complete. 

The Northern Americans were distasteful to the English 
aristocracy. The Southern planters were supposed to be 
gentlemen with whom they had more natural affinity. The 
war was condemned by three-quarters of the London and 
provincial press, and when the Emperor Napoleon invited 
us to join with him in recognising the South and breaking 
the blockade it perhaps rested with Disraeli to determine 
how these overtures should be received. Lord Palmerston 
was notoriously willing. Of the Tory party the greater 
part would, if left to themselves, have acquiesced with 
enthusiasm. With a word of encouragement from their 
leader a great majority in Parliament would have given 
Palmerston a support which would have allowed him to 
disregard the objections of some of his colleagues. But 
that word was not spoken. Disraeli v/as as mistaken as 
most of us on the probable results of the conflict. He sup- 
posed, as the world generally supposed, that it must leave 
North America divided, like Europe, into two or more 
independent States ; but he advised and he insisted that the 
Americans must be left to shape their fortunes in their own 
way. England had no right to interfere. 

Events move fast. Mankind make light of perils es- 
caped, and the questions which distracted the world a 
quarter of a century ago are buried under the anxieties and 
passions of later problems. Hereafter, when the changes 
and chances of the present reign are impartially reviewed, 



l60 , LORD BEACONSFIELD 

Disraeli will be held to have served his country well by his 
conduct at this critical contingency. 

In domestic politics he was a partisan chief. His 
speeches in Parliament and out of it were dictated by the 
exigencies of the passing moment. We do not look for the 
real opinions of a leading counsel in his forensic orations. 
We need not expect to find Disraeli's personal convictions 
in what he occasionally found it necessary to say. 

There did, however, break from him remarkable utter- 
ances on special occasions which deserve and will receive 
remembrance. Two extracts only can be introduced here, 
one on the state of the nation in 1849, when he spoke for 
the first time as the acknowledged Conservative leader, the 
other on Parhamentary Reform in 1865, the subject on 
which his own action two years later called out Carlyle's 
scornful comment. The first referred to the changed con- 
dition of things brought about by the adoption of Free 
Trade. 

' In past times,' he said, ' every Englishman was taught 
to beheve that he occupied a position better than the ana- 
logous position of individuals of his order in any other 
country in the world. The British merchant was looked on 
as the most creditable, the wealthiest, the most trustworthy 
merchant in the world. The English farmer ranked as the 
most skilful agriculturist. . . . The Enghsh manufacturer 
was acknowledged as the most skilful and successful, with- 
out a rival in ingenuity and enterprise. So with the British 
sailor ; the name was a proverb. And chivalry was con- 
fessed to have found a last resort in the breast of a British 
officer. It was the same in the learned professions. Our 
physicians and lawyers held higher positions than those of 
any other countrxcs. ... In this manner English society 



EFFECTS OF FREE TRADE i6l 



was based upon the aristocratic principle in its complete 
and most magnificent development. 

' You set to work to change the basis on which this society 
was established. You disdain to attempt the accomplish- 
ment of the best^ and what you want to achieve is the cheapest. 
The infallible consequence is to cause the impoverishment 
and embarrassment of the people. But impoverishment is not 
the only ill consequence which the new system may pro- 
duce. The wealth of England is not merely material wealth. 
It does not merely consist in the number of acres we have 
tilled and cultivated, nor in our havens filled with shipping, 
nor in our unrivalled factories, nor in the intrepid industry 
of our miners. Not these merely form the principal wealth 
of our country ; we have a more precious treasure, and 
that is the character of the people. This is what you have 
injured. In destroying what you call class legislation you 
have destroyed the noble and indefatigable ambition which 
has been the source of all our greatness, of all our prosperity, 
of all our powers.' 

The noble ambition of which Disraeli was speaking was 
the ambition of men to do their work better and more 
honestly than others, and the rage for cheapness has indeed 
destroyed this, and destroyed with it English integrity. We 
are impatiently told that the schools will set it right again. 
Character, unfortunately, is not to be formed by passing stan- 
dards, second or first. It is the most difficult of all attain- 
ments. It is, or ought to be, the single aim of every go- 
vernment deserving the name, and there is a curious remark 
of Aristotle that while aristocratic governments recognised 
the obligation and acted upon it, democracies invariably 
forget that such an obligation exists. They assume that 
character will grow of itself. Of character ottoo-ov oh; 

¥ 



1 62 LORD BEACONSFIELD 

ever so little would suffice, and so the old republics went 
to ruin, as they deserved to go. No subject deserves more 
anxious reflection. Yet Disraeli is the only modern English 
statesman who has given it a passing thought. 

The second passage referred to the playing with the 
Constitution which had been going on ever since 1832. 
Lord Grey had dispossessed the gentry and given the power 
to the middle classes. The operatives, the numerical 
majority, were left unrepresented. Neither party wished to 
enfranchise them, for fear they might be tempted to inroads 
upon property. Each was afraid to confess the truth, and 
thus year after year the extension of the suffrage was pro- 
posed dishonestly and dropped with satisfaction. Lord 
John Russell made his last experiment in 1865, and Dis- 
raeli gave the House a remarkable warning, which, if he 
afterwards neglected it himself, the statesmen who are now 
with light hearts proposing to break the Constitution to 
pieces may reflect upon with advantage. 

' There is no country at the present moment that exists 
under the same circum^stances and under the same conditions 
as the people of this realm. You have an ancient, powerful, 
and richly endowed Church, and perfect religious liberty. 
You have unbroken order and complete freedom. You 
have landed estates as large as the Romans, combined with 
a commercial enterprise such as Carthage and Venice united 
never equalled. And you must remember that this peculiar 
country, with these strong contrasts, is not governed by force. 
It is governed by a most singular series of traditionary 
influences, which generation after generation cherishes and 
preserves because it knows that they embalm custom and 
represent law. And with this you have created the greatest 
empir^ of modern times. You have amassed a capital of 



A WARNING 163 

fabulous amount. You have devised and sustained a system 
of credit still more marvellous, and you have established a 
scheme so vast and complicated of labour and industry 
that the history of the world affords no parallel to it. And 
these mighty creations are out of all proportion to the 
essential and indigenous elements and resources of the 
country. If you destroy that state of society remember 
this : England cannot begin again. There are countries which 
have gone through great suffering. You have had in the 
United States of America a protracted and fratricidal civil 
war, which has lasted for four years ; but if it lasted for 
four years more, vast as would be the disaster and desolation, 
when ended, the United States might begin again, because 
the United States would then only be in the same condition 
that England was in at the end of the wars of the Roses, 
when probably she had not three millions of population, 
with vast tracts of virgin soil and mineral treasures not only 
undeveloped but undreamt of. Then you have France. 
France had a real revolution in this century, a real revolu- 
tion, not merely a political but a social revolution. The 
institutions of the country were uprooted, the order of 
society abolished, even the landmarks and local names 
removed and erased. But France could begin again. 
France had the greatest spread of the most exuberant soil 
in Europe, and a climate not less genial. She had, and 
always had, comparatively a limited population, living in a 
most simple manner. France, therefore, could begin again. 
But England, the England we know, the England we live 
in, the England of which we are proud, could not begin 
again. I do not mean to say that after great trouble Eng- 
land would become a howling wilderness, or doubt that the 
good sense of the people would to some degree prevail, and 

M 2 



1 64 LORD BEACONSFIELD 

some fragments of the national character survive; but it 
would not be the old England, the England of power and 
tradition and capital, that now exists. It is not in the nature 
of things. And, sir, under these circumstances I hope the 
House, when the question is one impeaching the character 
of our Constitution, will hesitate; that it will sanction no 
step that has a tendency to democracy, but that it will main- 
tain the ordered state of free England in which we live.' 



^tancred' 165 



CHAPTER XI 

Literary work — ' Tancred ; or, the New Crusade '—Modern philosophy 
— The ' Vestiges of the Natural History of Creation ' — ' Life of Lord 
George Bentinck' — Disraeli's religious views— Revelation as op- 
posed to science — Dislike and dread of Rationalism — Religion and 
statesmanship — The national creed the supplement of the national 
law — Speech in the theatre at Oxford — Disraeli on the side of the 
angels. 

As Disraeli's public life grew more absorbing his literary 
work was necessarily suspended. But before the weight 
of leadership was finally laid upon him he had written two 
more books — ' Tancred ; or, the New Crusade,' the third 
of the series of novels which he called a trilogy, and 
the biography of his friend and comrade Lord George 
Bentinck. 

' Tancred ' of all his writings was that which he himself 
most esteemed. When it was composed he was still under 
the illusion of a possible regenerated aristocracy. He saw 
that they had noble qualities, but they wanted the inspira- 
tion of a genuine religious belief. Tancred, the only child 
and heir of a ducal family, is an enthusiastic and thought- 
ful youth with high aspirations after excellence. He is a 
descendant of the Crusaders, and his mind turns back to the 
land which was the birthplace of his nominal creed. There 
alone the Maker of the universe had held direct communi- 
cation with man. There alone, perhaps, it was likely that 



1 66 LORD BEACONSFIELD 

He would communicate with his creature again. Christian 
Europe still regarded the Israelites as the chosen people. 
Half of it still worshipped a Jew and the other half a Jewess. 
But between criticism and science and materialism, and the 
enervating influence of modern habits, the belief which 
lingered in form had lost its commanding power. 

Before the diseases of society could be cured the creed 
must be restored to its authority. The Tractarians were 
saying the same thing in tones of serious conviction. 
Disraeli, the politician and the man of the world, was 
repeating it in a tone which wavered between mockery and 
earnestness, the mockery, perhaps, being used as a veil to 
cover feelings more real than they seemed. 

Tancred, on leaving the University where he had 
brilliantly distinguished himself, is plunged into the London 
world. He meets attractive beings, whose souls, he ima- 
gines, must be as beautiful as their faces. One illusive 
charmer proves to be a gambler on the Stock Exchange ; 
another has been studying the 'Vestiges of the Natural 
History of Creation,' called here ' Revelations of Chaos,' 
and expounds the great mystery to him in a gilded drawing- 
room. 

' " The subject is treated scientifically," said the Lady 
Constance. " Everything is explained by geology and 
astronomy, and in that way it shows you exactly how a star 
is formed. Nothing can be so pretty, a cluster of vapour, 
the cream of the Milky Way, a sort of celestial cheese 
churned into light. You must read it. 'Tis charming." 

' " Nobody ever saw a star formed," said Tancred. 

' " Perhaps not. You must read the ' Revelations; ' it is all 
explained. But what is more interesting is the way in which 
man has been developed. You know all is development. 



*tancred' 167 

The principle is perpetually going on. First there was 
nothing; then there was something; then — I forget the 
next. I think there were shells, then fishes. Then came — 
let me see — did we come next ? Never mind that ; we 
came at last, and at the next change there will be something 
very superior to us, something with wings. Ah, that is it ! 
we were fishes. I believe we shall be crows ; but you must 
read it." 

' " I do not believe I ever was a fish," said Tancred. 

' " Oh ! but it is all proved. Read the book. It is 
impossible to contradict anything in it ; you understand it 
is all science. Everything is proved by geology, you know. 
You see exactly how everything is made, how many worlds 
there have been, how long they lasted, what went before, 
what comes next. We are a link in the chain as inferior 
animals were that preceded us. We in time shall be 
inferior. All that will remain of us will be some relics in a 
new Red Sandstone. This is development. We had fins ; 
we may have wings." ' 

The theory thus airily sketched has been established 
since, in a more completed argument, by Darwin. Such 
solid evidence as there is for it has been before mankind 
for thousands of years, and has not seemed unanswerable. 
The Jews and the Greeks knew as well as modern philoso- 
phers that human bodies are built on the same type, and 
are bred and supported by the same means as the bodies of 
animals ; that the minds of animals are in the same way 
clumsy likenesses of ours. Compared to the real weight of 
these acknowledged facts the additions of Darwin, or ot 
the author of the 'Vestiges,' are relatively nothing. If 
the doctrine of development has passed into popular 
acceptance, if it has been received into Churches and 



1 68 LORD BEACONSFIELD 

adapted to Catholic theology, the explanation is not in the 
increased form of evidence but in a change in ourselves. 
Candid consideration of our natures, as we now find them 
makes it appear not so improbable that we are but animals 
after all. Tancred, fresh from Tractarian Oxford, is uncon- 
vinced. He hurries to Palestine, sees a vision of angels on 
Mount Sinai, falls in love with a Jewish maiden who is an 
embodied spirit of inspiration, and is interrupted at the 
moment of pouring out his homage by the arrival of ' the 
Duke and Duchess at Jerusalem.' Whether the coming 
of these illustrious persons was to end in a blessing on 
his enthusiasm or in recalling him to a better recogni- 
tion of what was due to his station in society the story is 
silent. 

The ' Life of Lord George Bentinck ' is an admirably 
written biography of the friend who had stood by Disraeli 
in his conflict with Peel, and who, after living long enough 
to show promise of eminence, had suddenly and prematurely 
died. To the student of the Parliamentary history of 
those times the book is of great value. To the general 
reader the most interesting parts of it are those which throw 
light on Disraeli's own mind. 

The most important fact to every man is his religion. If 
we would know what a man is we ask what notions he has 
formed about his duty to man and God. The question is 
often more easily asked than answered, for ordinary 
persons repeat what they have learnt, and have formed no 
clear notions at all; and the few wise, though at bottom 
they may be as orthodox as a bishop, prefer usually to keep 
their thoughts to themselves. Disraeli, however, in this 
book invites attention to his own views. An insincere 
profession on such a subject forfeits the respect of every- 



ALTERNATIVE THEORIES OF LIFE 1 69 

one, and we are entitled to examine what he says and to 
enquire how far he means it. 

Those who cannot bear suspense and feel the necessity 
of arriving at a positive conclusion, make their choice 
between two opinions — one, that God created the world 
and created man to serve Him, that He gave to man a reve- 
lation of His law and holds him answerable for disobedience 
to it : the other, that the world has been generated by the 
impersonal forces of nature ; that all things in it, animate 
and inanimate, find their places and perform their functions 
according to their several powers and properties ; that man 
having ampler faculties than other animals, discovers the 
rules which are good for him to follow, as he discovers 
other things, and that what he calls ' revelations ' are no 
more than successive products of the genius of gifted 
members of his race thrown out in a series of ages. The 
second of these theories is what we generally call the ' creed 
of science ] ' the first is the religious and is represented 
by Judaism and Christianity. Disraeli, with a confessed 
pride in belonging himself to the favoured race, desires us 
to understand that he receives with full and entire convic- 
tion the fact that a revelation was really made to his fore- 
fathers, and rejects the opposite speculation as unsupported 
by evidence and degrading to human nature. The subject 
is introduced in an argument for the admission of the Jews 
to Parliament. He does not plead for their admission on the 
principle of ' toleration,' which he rejects as indifferentism, 
but on the special merits of the Jews themselves, and 
on their services to mankind. He regards Christianity as 
simply completed Judaism. Those who profess to be Jews 
only he considers unfortunate in believing only the first 
part of their religion, but still as defending and asserting 



170 LORD BEACONSFIELD 

the spiritual view of man's nature in opposition to the scien- 
tific, and as holding a peculiar place in the providential 
dispensation. He speaks of the mysteries of Christianity 
in a tone which, if not sincere, is detestable. ' If,' he says, 
' the Jews had not prevailed upon the Romans to crucify 
our Lord, what would have become of the atonement ? 
But the human mind cannot contemplate the idea that the 
most important deed of time could depend upon human 
will. The immolator was preordained, like the Victim, and 
the holy race supplied both.' The most orthodox divine 
could not use severer words of censure than Disraeli used for 
the critical rationalism which treats the sacred history as a 
myth — for Bishop Colenso, for the Essayists and Reviewers. 
His words have not the ring of the genuine theological metal. 
Artificial and elaborate diction is not the form in which 
simple belief expresses itself. Yet the fault may not be 
entirely in Disraeli. Even when most in earnest he was 
inveterately affected. It is to be remembered also that 
in his real nature he remained a Jew, and his thoughts on 
these great subjects ran on Asiatic rather than on European 
lines. We imagine that the Scriptures must be read every- 
where into the same meaning ; Vv-e forget how much 
European thought has passed into them through the tradi- 
tions of the Church and through the yarious translations. 
In the English version St. Paul reasons like an Englishman. 
A Jew reads in St. Paul's language allusions to oriental 
customs and beliefs of which Europeans know nothing ; vv^e 
have therefore no reason to suspect Disraeli of insincerity 
because he did not express himself as we do. 

Perhaps the truth may be this : He was a Conservative 
English statesman ; he knev/ that the English Church was 
the most powerful Conservative institution still remaining. 



RELIGION AND THE STATE 171 

Criticism was eating into it on one side, and ritualism on 
the other, breaking through the old use and wont, the 
traditionary habits which were its strongest bulwarks. He 
wished well to the Church. He was himself a regular com- 
municant, and he desired to keep it as it vv^as. He believed 
in the religious principle as against the philosophic ; and 
from the nature of his mind he must have known that 
national religions do not rest upon argument and evidence. 
When forms vary from age to age and country to country 
no one of them can be absolutely free from error. Plato, 
having drawn the model of a commonwealth with a code 
of laws as precise as positive enactment can prescribe, goes 
on to say that for conduct in ordinary life which law cannot 
reach there is the further rule of religion. Religion, how- 
ever, is a thing which grows and cannot be made. The 
central idea that man is a responsible being is everywhere 
the same ; but the idea shapes various forms for itself, into 
which legend, speculation, and prevailing opinions necessarily 
enter. As time goes on, therefore, questions rise concerning 
this or that fact and this or that ceremony, which if indulged 
will create general scepticism. Such enquiries must be sternly 
repressed. In religion lies the only guidance for human life. 
The wise legislator, therefore, will regard the Church of his 
country as the best support of the State. The subject will 
reflect that although observances may seem offensive and 
stories told about the gods may seem incredible ; yet as a 
rule of action a system which has been the growth of ages 
is infinitely more precious than any theory which he could 
think out for himself. He will know that his own mind, 
that the mind of any single individual, is unequal to so vast 
a matter, that it is of such imm.easurable consequence to 
him to have his conduct wisely directed that, although the 



172 LORD BEACONSFIELD 

body of his religion be mortal like his own, he must not 
allow it to be rudely meddled with. He may think as he 
likes about the legends of Zeus and Here, but he must 
keep his thoughts to himself : a man who brings into con- 
tempt the creed of his country is the deepest of criminals ; 
he deserves death and nothing less, ©ai/aro) lyj/xiova-Oix), 
' Let him die for it ' — a remarkable expression to have been 
used by the wisest and gentlest of human lawgivers. 

Disraeli's opinions on these subjects were perhaps the 
same as Plato's. He too may have had his uncertainties 
about Zeus and Here, and yet have had no uncertainty at 
all about the general truth of the teaching of the Church 
of England, while as a statesman he was absolutely con- 
vinced of the necessity of supporting and defending it, 
defending it alike from open enemies and from the foohsh 
ecclesiastical revivalism into which Tractarianism had de- 
generated. The strength of the Church lay in its hold 
upon the habits of the people, and whoever was breaking 
through the usages which time had made familiar and 
consecrated was equally dangerous and mischievous. The 
critics were bringing in reason to decide questions which 
belonged to conscience and imagination. The ritualists 
were bringing back pagan superstition in a pseudo-Chris- 
tian dress. He despised the first. He did what he could 
to restrain the second with a Public Worship Bill as soon 
as he had power to interfere. Late in his career, when he 
was within view of the Premiership, he used an opportunity 
of expressing his feeling on the subject in his own charac- 
teristic manner. 

Oxford having produced the High Churchmen, was 
now generating rationalists and philosophers. Intellectual 
society was divided into the followers of Strauss and 



A SCENE AT OXFORD I73 

Darwin and those who beheved that the only alternative 
was the ' Summa Theologise.' Both streams were concen- 
trated in support of the Liberal leader, who was Disraeli's 
political antagonist ; one because he represented progress, 
the other because in matters spiritual he was supposed to 
hold the most advanced Catholic doctrines. In the year 
1864 Disraeli happened to be on a visit at Cuddesdon, 
and it happened equally that a diocesan conference was to 
be held at Oxford at the time, with Bishop Wilberforce in 
the chair. The spiritual atmosphere was, as usual, disturbed. 
The clerical mind had been doubly exercised by the appear- 
ance of Colenso on the ' Pentateuch ' and Darwin on the 
' Origin of Species.' Disraeli, to the surprise of everyone, 
presented himself in the theatre. He had long abandoned 
the satins and silks of his youth, but he was as careful of 
effect as he had ever been, and had prepared himself in 
a costume elaborately negligent. He lounged into the 
assembly in a black velvet shooting-coat and a wide-awake 
hat, as if he had been accidentally passing through the 
town. It was the fashion with University intellect to despise 
Disraeli as a man with neither sweetness nor light ; but he 
was famous, or at least notorious, and when he rose to 
speak there was general curiosity. He began in his usual 
affected manner, slowly and rather pompously, as if he had 
nothing to say ^beyond perfunctory platitudes. 

The Oxford wits began to compare themselves favourably 
with the dulness of Parliamentary orators, when first one 
sentence and then another startled them into attention. 
They were told that the Church was not likely to be dis- 
established. It would remain, but would remain subject 
to a Parliament which would not allow an ijnperium in 
imperio. It must exert itself and reassert its authority, but 



1/4 LORD BEACONSFIELD 

within the limits which the law laid down. The interest 
grew deeper when he came to touch on the parties to one 
or other of which all his listeners belonged. High Church 
and Low Church were historical and intelligible, but there 
had arisen lately, the speaker said, a party called the Broad, 
never before heard of. He went on to explain what Broad 
Churchmen were. 

It would not be wise to treat the existence and influence of this 
new party with contempt. ... It is founded on the principle of 
criticism. Now doubt is an element of criticism, and the tendency 
of criticism is necessarily sceptical. It is quite possible that such 
a party may arrive at conclusions which we may deem monstrous. 
They may reject inspiration as a principle and miracles as a 
practice. That is possible : and I think it quite logical that 
having arrived at such conclusions they should repudiate creeds 
and reject articles of faith, because creeds and articles of faith 
cannot exist or be sustained without acknowledging the principle 
of inspiration and the practice of miracles. All that I admit. 
But what I do not understand, and what I wish to draw the 
attention of this assembly and of this country generally to, is 
this : that, having arrived at these conclusions, having arrived 
conscientiously at the result that with their opinions they must 
repudiate creeds and reject articles, they should not carry their 
principles to their legitimate end, but are still sworn supporters 
of ecclesiastical establishments, fervent upholders of or digni- 
taries of the Church. . . . If it be true, as I am often told it is, 
that the age of faith has passed, then the fact of having an opulent 
hierarchy, supported by men of high cultivation, brilliant talents 
and eloquence, and perhaps some ambition, with no distinctive 
opinions, might be a very harmless state of affairs, and it would 
certainly not be a very permanent one. But, my Lord, instead 
of believing that the age of faith has passed when I observe 
what is passing round us, what is taking place in this country, 
and not only in this country, but in other countries and other 
hemispheres, instead of believing that the age of faith has passed 
I hold that the characteristic of the present age is a craving 



A SCENE AT OXFORD 175 

credulity. My Lord, man is a being born to believe, and if no 
Church comes forward with its title-deeds of truth sustained by 
the traditions of sacred ages, and by the convictions of countless 
generations to guide him, he will find altars and idols in his own 
heart, in his own imagination. And what must be the relations 
of a powerful Church without distinctive creeds with a being ot 
such a nature ? Before long we shall be living in a flitting 
scene of spiritual phantasmagoria. There are no tenets, how- 
ever extravagant, and no practices, however objectionable, which 
will not in time develop under such a state of affairs, opinions 
the most absurd and ceremonies the most revolting. . . . 

Consider the country in which all this may take place. 
Dangerous in all countries, it would be yet more dangerous in 
England. Our empire is now unrivalled for its extent ; but the 
base, the material base of that empire is by no means equal to 
the colossal superstructure. It is not our iron ships, it is not 
our celebrated regiments, it is not these things which have 
created or indeed really maintain an empire. It is the 
character of the people. I want to know where that famous 
character of the English people will be if they are to be in- 
fluenced and guided by a Church of immense talent, opulencCj 
and power without any distinctive creed. You have in this 
country accumulated wealth that has never been equalled, and 
probably it will still increase. You have a luxury that will some 
day peradventure rival even your wealth ; and the union of 
such circumstances with a Church without a distinctive creed will 
lead, I believe, to a dissolution of manners and morals, which 
prepares the tomb of empires. ^ 

The opinions of the new school are paralysing the efforts of 
many who ought to be our friends. Will these opinions succeed ? 
My conviction is that they will fail. . . . Having examined all 
their writings, I believe without exception, whether thgy consist 
of fascinating eloquence, diversified learning, or picturesque 
sensibility exercised by our honoured in this University [Dean 
Stanley], and whom to know is to admire and regard ; or 
whether you find them in the cruder conclusions of prelates who 
appear to have commenced their theological studies after they 
have grasped the crozier [Bishop Colenso] ; or whether I read 



176 LORD BEACON SFIELD 

the lucubrations of nebulous professors [Frederick Maurice] who, 
if they could persuade the public to read their writings, would 
go far to realise that eternal punishment which they deny ; or, 
lastly, whether it be the provincial arrogance and precipitate 
self-complacency which flash and flare in an essay or review — I 
find the common characteristic of their writings is this : that 
their learning is always second-hand. . . . When I examine the 
writings of their masters, the great scholars of Germany, I find 
that in their labours [also] there is nothing new. All that inexor- 
able logic, irresistible rhetoric, bewildering wit could avail to 
popularise these views was set in motion to impress the new 
learning on the minds of the two leading nations of Europe [by 
the English and French deistical writers of the last century], and 
they produced their effect [in the French Revolution]. When 
the turbulence was over, when the waters had subsided, the 
sacred heights of Sinai and of Calvary were again revealed, and 
amidst the wreck of thrones, extinct nations, and abolished laws 
mankind, tried by so many sorrows, purified by so much suffer- 
ing, and wise with such unprecedented experience, bowed again 
before the Divine truths that Omnipotence had entrusted to the 
custody and promulgation of a chosen people. . . . 

The discoveries of science are not, we are told, consistent 
with the teachings of the Church. . . . It is of great importance 
when this tattle about science is mentioned that we should 
attach to the phrase precise ideas. The function of science is 
the interpretation of nature, and the interpretation of the 
highest nature is the highest science. What is the highest 
nature ? Man is the highest nature. But I must say that 
when I compare the interpretation of the highest nature 
by the most advanced, the most fashionable school of modern 
science with some other teaching with which we are familiar, 
I am not prepared to admit that the lecture-room is more 
scientific than the Church. What is the question now placed 
before society with a glib assurance the most astounding ? The 
1 question is this : Is man an ape or an angel? I, my Lord, I 
am on the side of the angels. I repudiate with indignation and 
abhorrence the contrary view, which I believe foreign to the 
conscience of humanity. More than that, from the intellectual 



ON THE SIDE OF THE ANGELS 1 77 

point of view the severest metaphysical analysis is opposed to 
such a conclusion, . . . What does the Church teach us ? That 
man is made in the image of his Maker. Between these two 
contending interpretations of the nature of man and their con- 
sequences society will have to decide. This rivalry is at the 
bottom of all human affairs. Upon an acceptance of that 
Divine interpretation for which we are indebted to the Church, 
and of which the Church is the guardian, all sound and salutary 
legislation depends. That truth is the only security for civilisa- 
tion and the only guarantee of real progress. 

Mr. Disraeli is on the side of the angels. Pit and gallery 
echoed with laughter. Fellows and tutors repeated the 
phrase over their port in the common room with shaking 
sides. The newspapers carried the announcement the next 
morning over the length and breadth of the island, and the 
leading article writers struggled in their comments to main- 
tain a decent gravity. Did Disraeli mean it, or was it but 
an idle jest? and what must a man be who could exercise 
his wit on such a subject ? Disraeli was at least as much 
in earnest as his audience. 

The phrase answered its purpose. It has lived and 
become historical when the decorous protests of pro- 
fessional divines have been forgotten with the breath which 
uttered them. The note of scorn with which it rings has 
preserved it better than any affectation of pious horror, 
which indeed would have been out of place in the presence 
of such an assembly. 



N 



I7S LORD BEACONSFIELD 



CHAPTER XII 

Indifference to money — Death of Isaac Disraeli — Purchase of Hughen- 
den — Mrs. Brydges Willyams of Torquay — An assignation with 
unexpected results — Intimate acquaintance with Mrs. Willyams 
— Correspondence — Views on many subjects — The Crown of Greece 
— Louis Napoleon — Spanish pedigree of Mrs. Willyams. 

' Adventures are to the adventurous : ' so Ixion had written 
in Athene's album. Nothing is more commonplace than 
an ordinary Parliamentary career. Disraeli's life was a 
romance. Starting with the least promising beginning, with 
a self-confidence which seemed like madness to everyone 
but himself, his origin a reproach to him and his inherited 
connections the least able to help him forward on the course 
which he had chosen, he had become, at a comparatively 
early age, by the mere force of his personal genius, the 
political chief of the proudest aristocracy in the world. 
His marriage had given him independence for the time, 
but his wife's income depended on her life, and a large part 
of it had long to be expended in paying the interest of his 
debts. Like his own Endymion he had no root in the 
country. The talents which he had displayed in Parliament 
would have given him wealth in any other profession. But 
he had neglected fortune for fame and power, and was not 
clear of his early embarrassments even when first Chancellor 
of the Exchequer. Being the leader of the country gentle- 
men he aspired to be a country gentleman himself, to be a 



PURCHASE OF HUGHENDEN I79 

magistrate, to sit in top boots at quarter sessions and manage 
local business. Part of his ambition he attained. In 1847 
he became member for his own county, and was so popular 
that he kept his seat without a contest as long as he 
remained in the House of Commons ; but for several years 
after he represented Buckinghamshire his connection with 
the soil was no more than nominal. Fortune, however, was 
again to stand his friend in a strange manner. He received 
a large sum from a private hand for his ' Life of Lord George 
Bentinck,' while a wealthy Conservative millionaire took 
upon himself in addition the debts to the usurers, the three 
per cent, with whicti he was content being exchanged for the 
ten per cent, under which Disraeli had so long been staggering. 
Isaac Disraeli lived long enough to see his son realise the 
dreams which he had himself long regarded with indifference 
or provocation. Dying in 1848, he left the remainder of the 
family fortune to be divided among his children. Benjamin 
Disraeli discharged his last filial duties in re-editing his 
father's works and prefixing to them an interesting biography 
of him. The portion which came to him was not con- 
siderable, but it was sufficient to enable him to purchase 
the manor of Hughenden, in the immediate neighbourhood 
of Bradenham, and Mrs. Disraeli raised in the park a 
handsome monument to the old man, as if to fasten the 
name and fame of the Disraelis upon the ground. Neither, 
however, would the estate have been bought or the monu- 
ment erected upon it but for another singular accident, as 
romantic as the rest of his history. 

At Mount Braddon, at Torquay, there resided an elderly 
widowed lady named Mrs. Brydges Willyams. She was of 
Jewish birth, daughter and heiress of a certain Mendez da 
Costa, who traced his origin, like Disraeli, to a great family 

N 2 



l80 LORD BEACONSFlEiLD 

in Spain. Her husband, one of the Willyamses of Cornwall, 
who was a man of some note there, had died in 1820. His 
wife was left without children ; she had no near relations, 
and with a large fortune at her own disposal. She was 
reputed, because perhaps she lived much in retirement, to 
be of eccentric habits. Being vain of her race, she was 
attracted by Disraeli's career, and she was interested in his 
writings. A Spanish Jewish origin was common to herself 
and to him, and some remote connection could, I have 
heard, be traced between the House of Lara, from which 
Disraeli descended, and her own, Mendez da Costa. At 
last, at the beginning of 1851, she wrote to him, professing 
general admiration and asking for his advice on some 
matter of business. 

Men whose names are before the world often receive 
letters of this kind from unknown correspondents. Disraeli 
knew nothing of Mrs. Willyams, and had no friends at 
Torquay whom he could ask about her. He threw the 
letter in the fire and thought no more of it. The lady 
persevered. Disraeli happened about the same time to be 
on a visit to Monckton Milnes at Frystone ; one of the party 
was a Devonshire man, and Disraeli asked him if he knew 
anything of a mad woman living in Torquay named Willyams. 
The gentleman, though not personally acquainted with Mrs. 
Willyams, was able to assure him that, though eccentric, 
she certainly was not mad. The lady, when the first Great 
Exhibition was opened, wrote again, pressing for an inter- 
view, and appointing as a place of meeting the fountain in 
the Exhibition building. The Disraeli of practical life was 
as unlike as possible to the heroes of his own novels. His 
mysterious correspondent might be young and beautiful or old 
and ugly. In either case the proposal could have no attrac- 



A ROMANTIC ADVENTURE l8l 

tion for him. His person was well known, and an assignation 
at so public a place could not pass unnoticed. In his most 
foolish years he had kept clear of entanglements with women, 
and did not mean to begin. He was out of town when the 
letter arrived. He found it when he returned, but again left 
it unnoticed. A third time, however, the lady wrote, and in 
more pressing terms appointed another hour at the same 
place. The perseverance struck him as singular. He 
showed the note to two intimate friends, who both advised 
him not to neglect a request which might have meaning in 
it. He went. By the side of the fountain he found sitting 
an old woman, very small in person, strangely dressed, and 
peculiar in manner ; such a figure as might be drawn in an 
illustrated story for a fairy godmother. She told him a long 
story of which he could make nothing. Seeing that he was 
impatient she placed an envelope in his hands, which, she 
said, contained the statement' of a case on which she desired 
a high legal opinion. She begged him to examine it at his 
leisure. He thrust the envelope carelessly in his pocket, 
and supposing that she was not in her right mind thought 
no more about the matter. The coat which he was wearing 
was laid aside, and weeks passed before he happened to 
put it on again. When he did put it on the packet was 
still where it had been left. He tore it open, and found 
a bank note for a thousand pounds as a humble contribution 
to his election expenses, with the case for the lawyers, which 
was less absurd than he had expected. This was, of course, 
submitted to a superior counsel, whose advice was sent at 
once to Torquay with acknowledgments and apologies for 
the delay. I do not know what became of the thousand 
pounds. It was probably returned. But this was the 
beginning of an acquaintance which ripened into ^ clos§ 



1 82 LORD BEACONSFIELD 

and affectionate friendship. The DisraeHs visited Mount 
Braddon at the close of the London season year after year. 
The old lady was keen, clever, and devoted. A corre- 
spondence began, which grew more and more intimate till 
at last Disraeli communicated freely to her the best of his 
thoughts and feelings. Presents were exchanged weekly. 
Disraeli's writing-table was adorned regularly with roses 
from Torquay, and his dinners enriched with soles and 
turbot from the Brixham trawlers. He in turn provided 
Mrs. Willyams with trout and partridges from Hughenden, 
and passed on to her the venison and the grouse which his 
friends sent him from the Highlands. The letters which 
they exchanged have been happily preserved on both sides. 
Disraeli wrote himself when he had leisure ; when he had 
none Mrs. Disraeli wrote instead of him. The curious 
and delicate idyl was prolonged for twelve years, at the 
end of which Mrs. Willyams died, bequeathing to him her 
whole fortune, and expressing a wish, which of course was 
complied with, that she might be buried at Hughenden, 
near the spot where Disraeli was himself to lie. The cor- 
respondence may hereafter be published, when a fit time 
arrives, with the more secret papers which have been 
bequeathed to the charge of the executors. I have been 
permitted a hasty perusal of these letters. Disraeli tells 
Mrs. Willyams of his work in Parliament, of the great 
people that he falls in with, of pomps and ceremonies, 
grand entertainments, palaces of peers and princes, such 
things as all women, old or young, delight to hear of. 
More charming are pictures of his life at Hughenden, his 
chalk stream and his fish, his swans and his owls, and his 
garden, which he had made a Paradise of birds. Now and 
then his inner emotions break out with vehemence. The 



CORRESPONDENCE WITH MRS. WILLYAMS 1 83 

Indian Mutiny and the passions called out by it shocked him 
into indignation ; although in his allusions to persons with 
whom he was either in contact or in collision there is not 
a single malicious expression. A few extracts follow, 
gathered at random. 

'What wondrous times are these,' he writes in 1861. 
' Who could have supposed that the United States of America 
would have been the scene of a mighty revolution ? No one 
can foresee its results. They must, however, tell immensely 
in favour of an aristocracy.' 

In 1862 came the second exhibition at South Kensing- 
ton. 

' This,' he wrote, ' is not so fascinating a one as that you 
remember when you made me an assignation by the 
crystal fountain, which I was ungallant enough not to 
keep, being far away when it arrived at Grosvenor Gate. 
But though not so charming it is even more wonderful. 
One was a woman — this is a man.' 

In the session of the same year he had been overworked, 
and Mrs. Willyams had prescribed for him. 

Hughenden: September 2, 1862. — 'I am quite myself 
again ; and as I have been drinking your magic beverage 
for a week, and intend to pursue it, you may fairly claim all 
the glory of my recovery, as a fairy cures a knight after a 
tournament or a battle. I have a great weakness for 
mutton broth, especially with that magical sprinkle which 
you did not forget. I shall call you in future after an old 
legend and a modern poem " the Lady of Shalot." I think 
the w^ater of which it was made would have satisfied even 
you, for it was taken every day from our stream, which rises 
among the chalk hills, glitters in the sun over a very pretty 
cascade, then spreads and sparkles into a little lake in 



1 84 LORD BEACONSFIELD 

which is a natural island. Since I wrote to you last we have 
launched in the lake two most beautiful cygnets, to whom 
we have given the names of Hero and Leander. They are 
a source to us of unceasing interest and amusement. They 
are very handsome and very large, but as yet dove-coloured. 
I can no longer write to you of Cabinet Councils or 
Parliamentary struggles. Here I see nothing but trees 
or books, so you must not despise the news of my 
swans.' 

Here follows an historical incident not generally known : — 

December (^^ 1862. — 'They say the Greeks, resolved to 
have an English king, in consequence of the refusal of 
Prince Alfred to be their monarch, intend to elect Lord 
Stanley. If he accepts the charge I shall lose a powerful 
friend and colleague. It is a dazzling adventure for the 
House of Stanley, but they are not an imaginative race, and 
I fancy they will prefer Knowsley to the Parthenon, and 
Lancashire to the Attic plains. It is a privilege to live in 
this age of rapid and brilliant events. What an error to 
consider it a utilitarian age. It is one of infinite romance. 
Thrones tumble down, and crowns are offered like a fairy 
tale ; and the most powerful people in the world, male and 
female, a few years back were adventurers, exiles, and 
demireps. Vive la bagatelle ! Adieu. D.' 

February 7, 1863. — ' The Greeks really want to make my 
friend Lord Stanley their king. This beats any novel. I 
think he ought to take the crown ; but he will not. Had I 
his youth I would not hesitate even with the earldom of 
Derby in the distance.' 

March 21, 1863. — ' The wedding [of the Prince of Wales] 
w^as a fine affair, a thing to remember. After the ceremony 
there was a splendid dejeuner ^t Windsof. The Queen was 



CORRESPONDENCE WITH MRS. WILLYAMS 1 85 

very anxious that an old shoe should be thrown at the royal 
pair on their departure, and the Lord Chamberlain showed 
me in confidence the weapon with which he had furnished 
himself. He took out of his pocket a beautiful white satin 
slipper which had been given him for the occasion by the 
Duchess of Brabant. Alas ! when the hour arrived his 
courage failed him. This is a genuine anecdote which you 
will not find in the " Illustrated London News." ' 

In 1863 Poland revolted, encouraged by the results of 
the Crimean war, which had enfeebled Russia, by the French 
campaign for the liberation of Italy, and by the supposed 
sympathy of England with oppressed nationalities. Louis 
Napoleon knew that his own throne was undermined, and 
was looking for safety in some fresh successful adventure. 
England had refused to join him in the recognition of 
Southern independence in America. Poland was another 
opportunity. The two extracts which follow deserve par- 
ticular attention. Disraeli had known the French Emperor 
in London and did not trust him. 

October 17, 1863. — 'The troubles and designs of the 
French Emperor are aggravated and disturbed by the death 
of Billault, his only Parliamentary orator and a first-rate one. 
With, for the first time, a real Opposition to encounter, and 
formed of the old trained speakers of Louis Philippe's reign, 
in addition to the young democracy of oratory which the 
last revolution has itself produced, the inconveniences, per- 
haps the injuries, of this untimely decease are incalculable. 
It may even force by way of distraction the Emperor into 
war. Our own Ministry have managed their affairs very 
badly, according to their friends. The Polish question is a 
diplomatic Frankenstein, created out of cadaverous remnants 
by the mystic blundering of Lord Russell. At present the 



1 86 LORD BEACONSFIELD 

peace of the world has been preserved not by statesmen, 
but by capitalists. For the last three months it has been 
a struggle between the secret societies and the Emperor's 
milHonaires. Rothschild hitherto has won, but the death 
of Billault may be as fatal to him as the poignard of a 
Polish patriot, for I believe in that part of the world they 
are called " patriots," though in Naples only " brigands." ' 

Novemher 5, 1863. — 'The great Imperial sphinx is at 
this moment speaking. I shall not know the mysterious 
utterances until to-morrow, and shall judge of his conduct as 
much by his silence as by his words. The world is very 
alarmed and very restless. Although England appears to 
have backed out of this possible war there are fears that the 
French ruler has outwitted us, and that by an alliance with 
Austria and the aid of the Italian armies he may cure the 
partition of Poland by a partition of Prussia ; Austria in 
that case to regain Silesia, which Frederick the Great won a 
century ago from Maria Theresa, France to have the Rhine, 
and Galicia and Posen to be restored to Poland. If this 
happens it will give altogether a new form and colour to 
European politics. The Queen is much alarmed for the 
future throne of her daughter ; but as the war will be waged 
for the relief of Poland, of which England has unwisely 
approved, and to which in theory she is pledged, we shall 
really be checkmated and scarcely could find an excuse to 
interfere even if the nation wished.' 

Disraeli's arms and motto have been a subject of some 
speculation. The motto, ' Forti nihil difficile,' has been 
supposed to have been originated by himself, as an expres- 
sion of his personal experience. The vanity, if vanity there 
was in the assumption of such a bearing, was the vanity of 
ancestry, not the vanity of a self-made man. When he told 



SPANISH QUARTERINGS 187 

the electors at Aylesbury that his descent was as pure as 
that of the Cavendishes, he was not alluding to Abraham, 
but to his Castilian progenitors. While leading the aristo- 
cracy of England he claimed a place among them in right of 
blood. Mrs. Willyams descended from a similar stock. 
She desired to quarter her coat with the bearings of the 
Mendez da Costas, and Disraeli undertook to manage it for 
her. He had to use the help of ' ambassadors and Ministers 
of State.' He laid under contribution the private cabinet of 
the Queen of Spain, and gave himself infinite trouble that 
the poor old lady might have the panels of her carriage 
painted to her satisfaction. Among the many letters on the 
subject there is one which explains the arms of Beaconsfield. 
July 23, 1859.— 'The Spanish families never had sup- 
porters, crests, or mottoes. The tower of Castile, which I 
use as a crest, and which was taken from one of the quarters 
of my shield, was adopted by a Lara in the sixteenth century 
in Italy, where crests were the custom— at least in the north 
of Italy— copied from the German heraldry. This also 
appHes to my motto. None of the southern races, I believe, 
have supporters or crests. This is Teutonic. With regard 
to the coronet, in old days, especially in the south, all 
coronets were the same, and the distinction of classes from 
the ducal strawberry leaf to the baron's balls is of compara- 
tively modern introduction.' 

When the harlequin's wand of Pitt converted Warren, the 
club waiter, into an earl, the Heralds' College traced his 
descent for him to the Normian Fitzwarren. Robert Burns 
was content to take his patent of nobility from a more im- 
mediate source. Disraeli doubtless had a right to use the 
bearings of the Laras if he cared about such things. But a 
Spanish pedigree. at best was a shadowy sort of business, and 
one could rather wish that he had let it alone. 



1 88 , LORD BEACONSFIELD 



CHAPTER XIII 

Fall of the Whigs in 1867 — Disraeli as Chancellor of the Exchequer — 
Reform Bill why undertaken — Necessities real or fancied of a Party 
Leader — Alternatives — Split in the Cabinet — Disraeli carries his 
point — Niagara to be shot — Retirement of Lord Derby — Disraeli 
Prime Minister — Various judgments of his character — The House of 
Commons responsible for his elevation — Increasing popularity with 
all classes. 

Something else too as well as the Castilian pedigree Disraeli 
might have done better to leave to others. In 1865 he had 
uttered his memorable warning in the House of Commons 
against playing tricks with the Constitution. Other countries 
might emerge out of a revolution and ' begin again.' Eng- 
land could not begin again. Lord John Russell's Reform 
Bill was thrown out. The Whig Ministry fell in 1867, and 
Lord Derby came a third time to the helm with Disraeli for 
his Chancellor of the Exchequer. They at least, it might 
have been thought, would have let alone a subject on which 
the latter had pronounced so recently so emphatic an 
opinion. But they were still a Ministry on sufferance, and 
how to turn a minority into a majority was still an unsolved 
problem. The spectre of Reform was unexorcised. Both 
parties had evoked it at intervals, when they wished ulti- 
mately to pose before the world as the people's friends. Yet 
no experienced statesman. Whig or Tory, unless from un- 
worthy jealousy, would have opened his lips to rgcomnien^ 



NEW REFORM BILL 1 89 

a change from which he could not honestly expect improve- 
ment. Even the working classes themselves, who were to 
be admitted to the suffrage, were not actively demanding it. 
No good had come to them from the great Bill of 1832. 
'I don't care who is in or who is out,' said a rough 
artisan to me. ' I could never see that any of them cared 
for us.' They had been told that they were living in a 
world where everyone was to look out for himself, that their 
interests would never be attended to till they had representa- 
tives who would force attention to them. But their general 
sense was that the ills which they complained of were out of 
reach of Parliament, and they were looking for a remedy in 
combination among themselves which would take the place 
of the old Guilds. The ancient organisation of labour had 
been destroyed in the name of Liberty. Their employers 
had piled up fortunes. They had been left ' free,' as it was 
called, with their families to multiply as they would, and to 
gather their living under the hoofs of the horses of a civilisa- 
tion which had become an aggregate of self-seeking units. 
To this they had been brought by a Parliamentary govern- 
ment, which, as far as they were concerned, was no govern- 
ment at all ; and they were incredulous of any benefit that 
was to arrive to them from improvements in a machine so 
barren. Thus they were looking rather with amused indif- 
ference than active concern while the parties in the House 
of Commons were fencing for the honour of being their 
champion. 

And yet Reform was in the air. The educated mind of 
England had been filled to saturation with the new Liberal 
philosophy. In the old days a ' freeman ' was a master of 
his craft, and not till he had learnt to do, and do well, some 
work which was useful to society did he enter upon his 



190 LORE) BEACONSFIELD 

privileges as a citizen. The situation was now reversed. 
To be ' free ' was to have a voice in making the laws of the 
country. Those who had no votes were still in bondage, 
and bondage was a moral degradation. Freedom was no 
longer a consequence and a reward, but the fountain of 
all virtue ; a baptismal sacrament in which alone human 
nature could be regenerated. In Great Britain and Ireland 
there were some thirty millions of inhabitants. Of these, under 
the Reform Bill of 1832, three hundred thousand only were 
in possession of their birthright. What claim, it was asked, 
had a mere fraction to monopolise a privilege which was not 
only a power in the State but the indispensable condition of 
spiritual growth and progress? We heard much about 
generous confidence in the people, about the political sta- 
bility to be expected from broadening the base of the 
pyramid, about the elevating consciousness of responsibility 
which would rise out of the possession of a vote — beautiful 
visions of the return of Astrsea, the millennium made into 
a fact by the establishment of universal liberty. Of all this 
Disraeli believed nothing. No one hated empty verbiage 
more than he. His dislike of cant was the most genuine 
part of him. But he too had once imagined that the work- 
ing-men were safer depositaries of power than the ten-pound 
householders ; and even old Tories, though they thought 
an extension of the franchise foolish and needless, did not 
suppose it w^ould be necessarily dangerous unless accom- 
panied with a vast redistribution of seats. Thus, although 
the mass of the existing voters were content with their privi- 
leges, and were not eager to share them, the House of 
Commons had already committed itself by second read- 
ings to the principle of Reform. The question would 
return upon them again and again till it was settled, and as 



NEW REFORM BILL 101 

things - stood either party had a Parhamentary right to deal 
with it. 

What were Lord Derby and Disraeh to do ? Accident 
had brought them into power, and accident or some adverse 
resolution of the House might at any time displace them. 
Experienced Parliamentary politicians had observed that the 
shake of the Constitution from the Act of 1832 had arisen 
more from the manner in which it w^as carried than from the 
measure in itself. A second Radical Reform Bill, which 
might be passed in a similar manner, was evidently imminent ; 
the multitude, who were so far quiet, might again be stirred ; 
and if once the classes and the masses were pitted against 
one another the breaking loose of a torrent might sweep 
away Church, House of Lords, landed estates, and all that 
was left of the old institutions of England. Such were 
the arguments on public grounds ; to w^hich, though it was 
unavowed, might be added the pleasure of 'dishing the 
Whigs.' 

But if Disraeli had looked back upon his own past 
career he might have remembered to have once said that 
there were considerations higher than any of these — that 
public men ought to be true to their real convictions. The 
Liberals had professed to believe in Reform. The Tories 
had never looked on it as more than an unwelcome and a 
useless necessity. Lord Derby had been a member of Lord 
Grey's first Reform Cabinet. Disraeli in his enthusiastic 
youth had called himself a Radical. But Lord Derby had 
been cured of his illusions ; and Disraeli had learnt the 
difference between realities and dreams. They might think 
that the danger of concession w^as less than the danger of 
resistance, but that was all. There were persons credulous, 
enough to hope that there might be found men at last 



192 LORD BEACONSFIELD 

among their Parliamentary leaders who would adhere in 
office to what they had said in Opposition. In the opinion 
of the Conservatives, the need of England was wise govern- 
ment, not political revolution. They might have said that 
if the experiment of Democracy was to be tried it should 
be tried by those who were in favour of the change on their 
own responsibility. They themselves would have no hand 
in it. They might be turned out of office, but the country 
would know that they had been faithful to their word, 
and could be relied upon when there was need of them 
again. Tories of the old school would have said so and 
dared the consequences, which might not have been very 
terrible after all, and Parliamentary government would 
have escaped the contempt into which it is now so rapidly 
falling. 

Unfortunately political leaders have ceased to think of 
what is good for the nation, or of their own consistency, or 
even of what in the long run may be best for themselves. 
Their business is the immediate campaign, in which they are 
to outmanoeuvre and defeat their enemies. On this condition 
only they can keep their party together. The Conservatives 
had been out of office, with but short-lived intervals, for thirty- 
five years. Peel's Government had been, as Disraeli said, 
not Conservative at all, but an organised hypocrisy. If 
they were to regard themselves as condemned to be in a 
perpetual minority, with no inducement to offer to tempt 
ability or ambition into their ranks, they would inevitably 
become disheartened and indifferent. The Parliamentary 
Constitution depended on the continuance of two parties, 
and if one of these disappeared the constitution would itself 
cease to exist. 

Disraeli's notion that the aristocracy were to recover their 



The leap in the t)ARi^ 193 

power by an alteration of their ways had proved 'a devout ima- 
gination.' The ancient organisation was visibly crumbling, 
and progress, whether it w^as upwards or downwards, was the 
rule of the hour. Lord Derby w^as old and out of health, 
and Disraeli himself was the ruling spirit of the Cabinet. 
Though born an Englishman, and proud of the position which 
he had won, he had not an English temperament, and he 
was unembarrassed by English prejudices. He surveyed the 
situation with the coolness of a general and the impartiality 
of a friend who had no personal interests at stake. He 
prided himself on his knowledge of the English character; and 
to some extent he did know it, though he mistook the surface 
for the substance. He believed — and the event a few years 
later seemed to show that he was right — in the essential 
Conservatism of the great mass of the people, and he 
resolved upon a ' leap into the dark.' He regretted the 
necessity. He did not hide from himself that he too was 
* stealing the Whigs' clothes while they were bathing.' His- 
tory was repeating itself. His situation too much resembled 
that of his old leader whom he had overthrown. His own 
language could be retorted upon him, and the more violent 
he had been at Peel the more severe would be his condem- 
nation. But a strategist must be governed by circumstances, 
and he could plead that the position was not entirely the 
same. Peel had been pledged to Protection, and was at the 
head of an unbroken majority returned in the Protectionist 
interest. In going over to Free Trade he had made a social 
revolution and destroyed his party. Disraeli could say that 
he had never opposed the principle of an extension of the 
suffrage, that he had more than once openly advocated it. 
He had always protested against the assumption that the 
Liberals had a monopoly of the question. 





194 LORD BEACONSFIELD 

All agreed that reform was inevitable ; if conducted by 
the Conservatives with a drag upon the wheel, it might be 
harmless, and might add to their strength. To persuade 
himself was more easy than to convince his party. Old- 
fashioned Toryism was stubborn and distrustful — distrustful 
of the measure in itself, and distrustful of the leader whom, 
for want of ability in themselves, they v^^ere compelled to 
follow. He found it necessary to ' educate ' them, as he 
scornfully said. He told them that they could not hold 
together on the principle of mere resistance to the spirit ot 
the age. Change was the order of the day. To cease to 
change would be to cease to live. They must accept the 
conditions. Party government is perhaps an accident of a 
peculiar period. To divide the intellect of the country into 
hostile camps, each struggling to outwit or outbid the other, 
is not a promising, and may not be a permanent, method of 
conducting the affairs of a great country. But it is a present 
fact, theoretically admired and practically accepted and 
acted on, and while it continues, the opposing chiefs have to 
disregard the reproaches of inconsistency. They have to do 
what occasion requires — attack, defend, snatch advantages, 
and improve opportunities. 

In earlier years, Disraeli, by speech and writing, had 
tried for a nobler policy. He had hoped for a real govern- 
ment again, to be brought about by an aristocratic regenera- 
tion. But the aristocracy had not regenerated themselves. 
The American war, which was to have shown the superiority 
of aristocracies to democratic republics, had had precisely 
the opposite effect. He was carrying on the administration 
with a minority. His business now as a general was to go 
v»'ith the times, and if possible change his minority into a 
majority. Tory principles were dead. His best chance 



'SHOOTING NIAGARA' I95 

was in the daring stroke, on which Carlyle so scornfully 
commented, and in throwing himself boldly upon the 
masses of the people. 

All admit Disraeli's dexterity as a Parliamentary com- 
mander. To succeed, he knew that he must outbid the 
highest offers of his opponents. He shook his Cabinet in 
the process. Three of his most distinguished supporters — • 
Lord Salisbury, Lord Carnarvon, and General Peel — threw 
up their offices and left him. But the body of his army 
consented to go with him. / He could be confident in the 
general support of the Opposition. Their consent could not 
be refused. For form's sake, and to satisfy his followers, he 
introduced a few limitations of which he must have fore- 
seen that the Liberals would demand the surrender, and to 
which his easy sacrifice of them showed that he attached 
no importance. He carried a bill which in its inevitable 
developments must give the franchise to every householder 
in the United Kingdom ; and he gained for his party the 
credit, if credit it was, of having passed a more completely 
democratic measure than the most Radical responsible 
statesman had as yet dared to propose. The reproaches 
which were heaped upon him are fresh in the memories of 
many of us. Carlyle roused himself out of the sorrows into 
which he had been plunged by his wife's death to write his 
' Shooting Niagara.' In Carlyle's opinion, the English 
people had gone down the cataract at last, and nothing was 
left to them but to continue their voyage to the ocean on 
such shattered fragments of their old greatness as they 
could seize and cling to. A quarter of a century has gone 
by and the Constitution still holds together. The prophet 
of Chelsea may yet prove to have been clear-sighted. 
There are sounds in the air of cracking timbers, and signs 

o 2 



196 Lord beaconsfield 

of rending and disruption. But a powerfully organised 
framework does not break with a single shock, and Disraeli 
scored a victory. Enemies said that he had covered him- 
self with ignominy ; but the disgrace sat light upon him, 
and by his manoeuvres he had secured for his party at least 
one more year of office. Time must pass before the newly 
enfranchised voters could be placed upon the register. If 
the Liberals forced a dissolution before the process was 
completed, a new Parliament would have to be chosen by 
the old constituencies, and they would gain nothing even if 
they were again in a majority, for there would be an appeal 
to the fresh electors, whose votes no one could count upon. 
Two general elections close one upon another would be so 
inconvenient that the country would resent it upon them. 
They had therefore to wait and digest their spleen, while 
new honours descended upon the triumphant Disraeli. 
Lord Derby's health broke down ; he was no longer equal ] 
to the work of office. He retired, and the author of ' Vivian 
Grey' became Prime Minister. The post which in the S 
extravagance of youthful ambition he had told Lord Mel- j 
bourne could alone satisfy his ambition was actually his 
own, and had been won by courage, skill, and determination, '' 
and only these. He libertino pat7'e nafus, a libertiniis 
himself — without wealth, without connection, for the peers 
and gentlemen of England resented his supremacy while 
they used his services— had made himself the ruler of 
the British Empire. He had not stooped to the common 
arts of flattery. He had achieved no marked successes in 
the service of the country. It was supposed, perhaps 
without ground, that he was not even a grata persona to 
the highest person in the realm, till Her Majesty was com- 
pelled to accept his supremacy. He had won his way by 



PRIME MINISTER 1 97 

parliamentary ability and by resolution to succeed. Whether 
it be for the interest of the nation in the long run to commit 
its destinies to men of such qualifications is a question which 
it will by-and-by consider. If a time comes when party 
becomes faction, and the interests of the empire are sacri- 
ficed visibly in contention for office, when the wise and the 
honest hold aloof from politics as a game in which they can 
no longer take part, Parliamentary government will fall into 
the contempt which Disraeli himself already secretly felt for 
it. The system will collapse, and other methods will be 
tried. Disraeli, however, had risen by the regular process, 
and according to the representative principle was the chosen 
of the country. Among rival politicians his elevation created 
irritation more than surprise, for it had been long regarded 
as inevitable. Outside Parliamentary circles there was no 
irritation' at all, but rather pride and pleasure. Englishmen 
like those who have made a position for themselves by their 
own force of character. Disraeli's public life was before the 
world. He had made innumerable enemies. A thousand 
calumnies had pursued him. His actions, good, bad, and 
indifferent, had been coloured to his least advantage. He 
had been described as an adventurer and a charlatan, 
without honesty, without sincerity, without patriotism ; a 
mercenary, a gladiator ; the Red Indian of debate. 

If this was the true account of him, one has to ask 
oneself in w^onder what kind of place the House of 
Commons must be, when such a man can be selected by it 
as its foremost statesman. There he had sat for thirty years, 
session after session, ever foremost in the fight, face to face 
with antagonists who were reputed the ablest speakers, the 
most powerful thinkers whom the country could produce. 
Had his enemies' account of him been true, why had they 



198 LORD BEACONSFIELD 

not exposed and made an end of him ? The EngHsh 
people had too much respect for their institutions to beheve 
in so incredible a story. The violence of the attacks recoiled 
upon their authors. With his accession to the Premiership 
he became an object of marked and general regard. When 
he went down to Parliament for the first time in his new 
capacity, he was wildly cheered by the crowds in Palace 
Yard. The shouts were echoed along Westminster Hall 
and through the lobbies, and were taken up again warmly 
and heartily in the House itself, which had been the scene 
of so many conflicts — the same House in which he had 
been hooted down when he first rose to speak there. 

And the tribute was to himself personally. He was not 
the representative of any great or popular cause. Even in 
carrying his Reform Bill he had not stooped to inflated 
rhetoric, or held out promises of visionary millenniums. 
He Avas regarded merely as a man of courage and genius, 
not less honest than other pohticians because his professions 
were few. 



IRISH POLICY OF MR. GLADSTONE 1 99 



CHAPTER XIV 

Reply of the Liberals to the Tory Reform Bill — State of Ireland — The 
Protestant Establishment — Resolution proposed by Mr. Gladstone 
— Decay of Protestant feeling in England — Protestant character of 
the Irish Church — The Upas Tree — Mr. Gladstone's Irish policy — 
General effect on Ireland of the Protestant Establishment — Voltaire's 
opinion — Imperfect results — The character of the Protestant gentry 
— Nature of the proposed change — Sprung on England as a surprise 
— Mr. Gladstone's resolutions carried — Fall of Disraeli's Govern- 
ment. 

Disraeli, in appropriating Parliamentary Reform, obliged 
the Liberals to look about them for another battle-cry at 
the next election — something popular and plausible which 
would touch the passions of the constituencies. The old 
subjects were worn out or disposed of. It had become 
necessary to start new game. The genuine Radical desires 
to make a new world by a reconstruction of society. He 
has his eye always on one or other of the old institutions, 
which he regards as an obstacle to progress. There are, 
therefore, at all times, a number of questions which 'are 
gradually 'ripening,' as it is called, but w^hich wait to be 
practically dealt with till the opportunity presents itself. 
Among these the Liberal leader had now to make his 
choice. A small advance would not answer. Disraeli had 
ventured a long and audacious step. The other side must 
reply with a second and a longer if the imagination was to 
be effectively awakened. 



200 LORD BEACONSFIELD 

The Established Church of England, the Land Laws, 
the House of Lords, perhaps the Crown, were eventually 
to be thrown into the crucible ; but the nation was not yet 
prepared for an assault on either of these. The weak point 
was found in Ireland, which at all times had been the 
favourite plaything of English faction. Three millions of 
Irish had fled across the Atlantic to escape from famine 
since the failure of the potato. Some had gone of their 
own wills, some had been roughly expelled from their homes. 
With few exceptions, they had borne the cost of their own 
exportation. Those who went first sent home money to 
bring out their families and friends, and the economists had 
congratulated themselves that the Irish difficulty was at last 
disposed of, at no expense to the British taxpayer. A few 
insignificant persons, who understood the Irish character, 
knew too wtU that the congratulations were premature. If 
the poor Irish were really our fellow-subjects, these persons 
thought that some effort should have been made to soften 
their expulsion, and to provide or at least to offer them 
homes in the vast colonial territories which then belonged 
to us. Past efforts in that direction, indeed, had not been 
encouraging. For several generations we had poured ship- 
loads of Irish into the West Indies. Scarcely a survivor of 
Celtic blood is now to be found in those islands. It would 
have been something, however, to have shown that we were 
generously anxious to bear our share in the undeserved 
calamity which had fallen on an ill-used people, and to try 
to repair the efforts of centuries of negligence. If we left 
them to their own resources without regret, with an avowed 
confession that we were glad to be rid of them, Irish dis- 
affection would become more intense than ever. We did 
§0 leaye them. They streamed across to the United States, 



FENIANISM 201 

carrying hatred of England along with them, while the walls 
of the deserted villages in Connaught preached revenge to 
those who were left at home. The exiles throve in their new 
land — a fresh evidence, if they needed more, that English 
domination had been the cause of their miseries. They 
multiplied, and became a factor in American political life. 
They fought, and fought well, in the American Civil War. 
When the Civil War was over, they hoped for a war with 
England, and tried to kindle it in Canada. The ' Alabama ' 
question having been settled peacefully, they failed in their 
immediate purpose ; but none the less they were animated 
with an all-pervading purpose of revenge ; and there were 
many thousands of them who had escaped the Southern 
bullets who were ready for any desperate adventure. An 
invading force was to cross the Atlantic, while Ireland or- 
ganised itself in secret societies to receive them as it did to 
receive the French in 1797. Chester Castle and the Fenian 
rebellion of 1867 are not yet forgotten even in these days of 
short memories and excited hopes. The rising was abortive. 
It failed, as Irish rebellions have so often failed, because the 
Irish people trusted in their numbers and neglected to make 
serious preparations. The American general who came 
over to take the command had been told that he would 
find ten thousand men drilled and armed. He did not 
find five hundred, and he left the enterprise in contempt. 
The scattered risings which followed were easily suppressed, 
and were suppressed with gentleness. The exhortation of a 
leading Liberal journal to make an example of the rebels in 
the field, because executions afterwards were incpnvenient, 
was happily not attended to. But the leniency with which 
the leading insurgents were treated was construed into a 
confession of weakness, The rebellious spirit was feci from 



202 LORD BEACONSFIELD 

America, and detached acts of violence, attempted rescues 
of prisoners, and blowing up of gaols showed that Ireland 
was as unsubdued as ever. The great Liberal champion saw 
the occasion which he required. The Clerkenwell explosion, 
he said, had brought the Irish question within the range of 
practical politics, and in this extraordinary acknow^ledgment 
invited an inflammable people to persevere in outrage if 
they desired to secure their rights. He declared in a 
memorable speech that the cause of Irish wretchedness 
had been Protestant Ascendency. Protestant Ascendency 
was the Irish upas-tree, with its three branches, the Church, 
the land, and the education. The deadly growth once cut 
down, the animosity would end, and the English lion and 
the Irish lamb w^ould lie down together in peace. That to 
disarm the garrison was a likely mode of reconciling an 
unwilling people to a connection which they detest, was an 
expectation not in accordance with general human experi- 
ence ; still less when it was confessedly recommended as a 
reward of insurrection. But the Irish question was ingeniously 
selected as a counterstroke to Disraeli's Reform Bill. Had 
Disraeli but left Reform to its owners the Liberals would 
have been provided with work at home and have left Ireland 
alone. But the deed was done, and many circumstances 
combined to suggest to the eminent statesman who had 
discovered the secret of Irish disaffection that here was the 
proper field for his genius, and that he was peculiarly the 
person to put his hand to the plough. The Irish Church 
had long been a scandal to Liberal sentiment, and Disraeli 
himself had denounced it. The land Vv'as the favourite 
subject of Radical declamation. Land-owning in Ireland 
showed under its least favourable aspect, and could there 
be assaulted at best advantage. It was true that the control 



WEAKENED INFLUENCE OF PROTESTANTISM 203 

of Ireland was vital to the safety of Great Britain, and that 
the Protestants there were the only part of the population 
whose loyalty could be depended on. Until recent years the 
Protestant feeling in England and Scotland would have for- 
bidden a revolutionary change avowedly intended to weaken 
the Protestant settlement ; but the extended franchise, 
either already conceded or made inevitable by Disraeli's 
Bill, would throw four-fifths of the representation of Ire- 
land into Nationalist hands, and the adhesion of such a 
phalanx would give the party which could secure it an 
overwhelming preponderance, while the Protestant pre- 
judices which had served hitherto as a check were wearing 
away. 

Sixty years ago the British nation adhered almost 
unanimously to the traditions of the Reformation. It had 
grown to its present greatness as a Protestant power. The 
Pope was still the Man of Sin. Roman doctrine, either 
pure or modified into Anglicanism, was regarded with 
suspicion, aversion, or contempt. Conversions were un- 
heard of, and the fey\^ surviving hereditary Catholics were 
unobtrusive and politically ciphers. Catholic Emancipation 
in restoring them to power restored them at the same time 
to social consequence. The Liberals who had advocated 
that great measure, historians, statesmen, and philosophers, 
broke with the principles of which their predecessors had 
once been the staunchest advocates, changed front, and 
traduced the Reformation itself, to which Liberalism owed 
its existence. While Macaulay and Buckle were cursing 
Cranmer, the Oxford Movement made its way among the 
clergy, was welcomed largely by the upper classes, whose 
nerves were offended by Puritan vulgarities, and leavened 
gradually the whole organisation of the Church of England. 



204 LORD BEACONSFIELD 

Men of intellect who would once have interfered had 
ceased to care for such things, and allowed them to go their 
own way. The Rationalists and critics, whom Disraeli so 
sagaciously disliked, worked havoc in a party whose whole 
belief was in their Bible. The Evangelicals, who had been 
narrow and tyrannical in the days of their power, found 
themselves fading into impotence ; while in the mass of the 
people a doctrinal faith was superseded by a vague religiosity 
which saw no particular difference between one creed and 
another. 

The High Churchmen, who grew strong as their rivals 
declined, called themselves Catholics again, and abjured the 
name of Protestant. To unprotestantise the Church of 
England had been the confessed purpose of the first 
Tractarians, and the work had been effectively done. Mr. 
Gladstone was the most distinguished of their lay adherents. 
The purity of his life, the loftiness of his principles, his well- 
known because slightly ostentatious piety commended him 
generally to the national confidence, English statesmen 
with strong religious convictions having been recently 
uncommon articles. Thus, in addition to the ordinary 
Radical forces, Mr. Gladstone had the support of a great 
body of influential clergy, who, although tried at times by 
his questionable associations, continued to believe in him 
and uphold him — to uphold him especially in his onslaught 
upon their unfortunate Irish sister. The Irish Church 
had refused to follow in the new counter-Reformation. 
The Irish Church was Evangelical to the heart — actively, 
vigorously, healthily Evangelical— a Church militant in 
Luther's spirit. 'We have no Tractarians here,' said the 
Bishop of Cashel to me. ' We have the real thing, and 
know too n^uch about it.' The life which wa§ showing w^§ 



THE CHURCH OF IRELAND 20$ 

of late growth too, and was therefore hkely to continue. 
The Church of Ireland as a missionary institution had 
not been a success. Established by Elizabeth for political 
reasons, it had existed for two centuries and a half, making 
no impression on the mass of the population. Such 
Protestant spirituality as remained was confined to the 
Presbyterians of Ulster and the few Southern Nonconformists 
who were descended from the Cromwellian colonists. The 
bishops, secured after the Revolution by the Penal Laws, 
had received their large incomes and consumed them with 
dignity ; but when they exerted themselves it was to perse- 
cute Protestant dissenters and drive them out of Ireland. 
The ancient churches fell to ruins. Incumbents ceased to 
reside where they had no congregations, left their parishes 
to underpaid curates, or more commonly to the tithe 
proctor. So things w^ent on till the long negligence had 
borne its inevitable fruit. The Nonconformists were then 
let alone. The rebellion of 1798, the rapid growth of the 
Catholic population, the immediate contact with the Catholic 
system in an aggressive form, and the relaxation of the Penal 
Code gradually roused the clergy to exertion. The ruined 
churches were repaired or others provided, and before the 
middle of the present century the Protestant ministers in 
Ireland were showing a sincerity, a piety, a devotion to the 
work of their calling of exceptional and peculiar interest. I 
was myself at that time brought in contact with many of 
the Established clergy in the southern provinces. They 
had more of the saintly character of the early Christians 
than any clergy of any denomination that I had ever fallen 
in with. 

After the tithe question had been settled they had no 
quarrels with the Catholic peasantry. They were poor, but 



206 LORD BEACONSFIELD 

they were charitable beyond their means. They were 
beloved, respected, trusted by all classes of the population. 
In every parish there was a resident educated gentleman, 
whose help in the most miserable times was never asked in 
vain if the occasion was not beyond the resources of those 
to whom the appeal was made. They made some few 
proselytes, and this was treated as a crime in them, while 
their rivals thought it no crime to convert a heretic. The 
Evangelical Calvinism which they generally professed was 
more attractive to the Celtic peasantry than the Episcopal 
Via Media. The Irish nature is impressible by a real belief, 
and the old creed which roused half Europe to fight for 
spiritual liberty in the sixteenth century in this one corner 
of the globe remained alive and active. The differences 
which had separated the Establishment from the Ulster 
Presbyterians had practically disappeared. For the first 
time since the Reformation the Protestants of Ireland were 
of one heart and one mind. 

The time had been when such a disposition would have 
had the v/arm sympathies of the sister island. But the 
Protestant fire on this side of the Channel had sunk to ashes, 
and the ashes themselves were cooling. Even among the 
Scotch and the Dissenters the creed of Knox and Cromwell 
had subsided into opinion flavoured with a vague Liberalism. 
While the English Church parties were drifting Romeward 
with an eagerness which to some persons appeared Hke the 
descent over a steep place of certain foolish animals, 
their poor Irish brethren who adhered to the faith of their 
fathers had lost their sympathy, and when the statesman 
whom they regarded with so much admiration proposed to 
disable and disendow the Irish branch of the Establishment, 
they looked on with indifference and did not withdraw their 



IRELAND AND ENGLAND 20)^ 

Confidence in him. They did not actively approve. Even 
Mr. Gladstone himself professed to feel some qualms of 
conscience. ' We do it wrong,' he said, ' being so majes- 
tical, to offer it the show of violence.' But by their silence 
they gave him their tacit sanction, and lent an air of 
respectability to a proceeding which without it he might 
have failed to go through with. They allowed the Irish 
Church to be dealt with politically, as a branch of his 
Protestant Ascendency which had been called a upas-tree. 

As a Churchman Mr. Gladstone was a Tractarian ; as a 
statesman, he had become an advanced. „.E..adical. From 
neither point of view was the Irish Church to his liking. 
Yet as English statesman he was taking a bold, perhaps a 
rash step in endeavouring to weaken English authority in a 
country so ill-affected to us, when it had been built up with 
so many centuries of effort. Geographical position compels 
us to keep Ireland subject to the British Crown. That is 
the first fact of the situation — a situation which cannot be 
changed till we have lost our place as a great European 
power. The Irish, perhaps as much for this reason as for 
any other, have resisted and still resist. They might have 
been reconciled to their fate in return for other advantages 
if their own wills had been consulted ; but they have re- 
sented the claim of necessity. Difference of religion has 
not been the cause of the hostility. Before the Reformation 
as much as after it they never missed an opportunity of 
injuring or attempting to break from us. The Reformation 
appeared to sanctify their quarrel, and caused a century of 
civil war and desolation ; and the English Parliament, after 
all other means had been tried in vain to bring them to 
obedience, had determined to colonise the island with Scotch 
and English Protestants whose loyalty could be depended 



208 LORD BEACONSFIELD 

on. The land was taken forcibly away from the native 
owners, and was given to adventurers or to Cromwell's 
soldiers who would undertake to defend it. It was a 
violent measure ; but to hold a country in subjection 
against its w^ill is itself an act of violence which entails 
others. The Irish people had shown in five centuries of 
resistance that they could only be held to us by force. The 
colonists were the English garrison, and however grave their 
faults and miserable their deficiencies, the result was that 
Ireland had a century of peace. Twice during that period 
there was a civil war in Great Britain, and Ireland remained' 
quiet. When the American colonies revolted, the Irish 
Catholics offered their sw^ords and their services to 'the 
best of kings,' and only when the Penal Laws were relaxed 
and they were allowed an instalment of liberty did they 
again attempt insurrection. The Penal Laws are considered 
an atrocity. They were borrowed from the terms of the 
Revocation of the Edict of Nantes, and Voltaire, an 
impartial witness on such a subject, was able to use language 
about Ireland during the time when they were in force which 
deserves more attention than it has met with. ' Ce pays 
est toujours reste sous la domination de I'Angleterre, mais 
inculte, pauvre et inutile jusqu'a ce qu'enfin dans le 
dix-huitieme siecle I'agriculture, les manufactures, les arts, 
les sciences, tout s'y est perfectionne, et I'lrlande, quoique 
subjuguee, est devenue une des plus florissantes provinces 
de I'Europe.' (' Essai sur les Moeurs,' chap. 50.) So Ireland 
appeared to the keenest eye in Europe at the time when it 
is the fashion to say that she was groaning under the hate- 
fullest tyranny. The description was too favourable, yet it 
was relatively correct. The Irish are a military people. 
They are admirable as soldiers and police. They obey 



IRISH CHARACTER 209 

authority and prosper under it. They run wild when left 
to their own wills. An industrious people thrive best when 
free. A fighting people require to be officered, and when 
authority is firm and just are uniformly loyal. In Ireland, 
unfortunately, authority was not firm and was not just. The 
trade laws were iniquitous. The Protestant gentry were 
forced into idleness. They became a garrison without 
wholesome occupation ; yet at worst such advance as 
Ireland did make was wholly due to them, and every step 
which was taken to reduce their power brought back the 
old symptoms. It cannot be said that the system was 
satisfactory ; yet to abolish it altogether, to declare it to be 
a poisonous plant which required to be uprooted, was an 
adventure which ought not to have been entered upon 
without maturer consideration than it received. The in- 
justice (such as there was) lay in the original sin of forcing 
an unwilling people into a connection which they detest. 
Protestant ascendency was the instrument by which the 
connection was maintained, and the only one which had 
even partially succeeded. If it was swept away, what was 
to take its place? Conciliation, we are told. But what 
had conciliation effected hitherto ? The abolition of the 
Penal Laws was to have brought peace. It brought only a 
sword. The admission of the Catholics to the franchise 
was to have brought peace. It was followed instantly by 
rebellion. Parliament was opened to them, and tithe riots 
broke out, and midnight murdering. On the heel of each 
concession came a Coercion A.ct, because Ireland could not 
be governed otherwise. The eager Celt has regarded each 
step gained as the conquest of an outwork of English 
dominion which has served but to whet the appetite for 
attack and to weaken the defence. What reason was there 

p 



210 LORD BEACONSFIELD 

to suppose that when they heard Church and landlords 
denounced, when they were told by a great English states- 
man that their grievances would only be attended to when 
they made themselves dangerous, the result would be 
different ? The great grievance of all, the English sove- 
reignty, would be left. If that too was to be sacrificed — if 
after the internal administration of their country was made 
over to themselves they showed that nothing would satisfy 
them except national independence — were the advocates of 
a trusting policy prepared to concede this point also ? They 
might answer ' Yes ' perhaps. Better Ireland should be free 
altogether than chained to England against her will. This 
might be their own opinion, but they could not answer for 
the English nation ; and if the English nation refused, 
there would be nothing for it but civil war and a fresh 
conquest. 

Before letting loose an agitation so far-reaching and of 
such uncertain consequence, Mr, Gladstone ought to have 
laid out the whole problem for consideration in all its possible 
issues j not partially and crudely for an immediate election 
cry, but in a form in which it could be maturely discussed 
and paused over for years. To reverse and undo the policy 
of centuries was a step which ought not to have been ven- 
tured without the national consent. The electors knew 
less of Ireland even than Mr. Gladstone himself, who ought 
to have made them first understand what it was which they 
were called on to sanction. 

But these are not times for long reflection. A Parlia- 
mentary leader sees an opportunity. His followers echo 
him. Sentiment displaces reason, and a majority is the most 
conclusive of arguments. 

Mr. Gladstone brought forward his famous resolutions, 



CONSERVATIVE DEFEAT 211 

carried them against Mr. Disraeli's Government, and at the 
dissolution was rewarded by a majority so sweeping that 
resistance was impossible. Disraeli resigned without waiting 
for the meeting of Parliament — a sensible example which 
has been since followed. With his usual calmness he 
rallied his distracted followers and waited patiently while 
the two great branches of the upas-tree were being hacked 
off, well aware that the hot stage would be followed by a 
cold one when the effects of this new departure began to 
show themselves. The Irish Church was reduced to a 
voluntary communion. Tenants and landlords were made 
joint owners of their lands — ill-mated companions set to 
sleep in a single bed, from which one or other before long was 
likely to be ejected. Ireland made its usual response ; and 
within two years the state of Westmeath became so serious 
that the Cabinet which was to have won the Irish heart was 
obliged to move for a secret committee to consider how the 
administration was to be carried on. Disraeli on leaving 
office might if he had chosen have retired to the Upper 
House. He pleased himself better by prevailing on the 
Queen to confer a coronet on his faithful companion, and 
no act of his life gave him greater pride or pleasure. Mrs. 
Disraeli ^ became Viscountess Beaconsfield, and he himself 
remained in the House of Commons, where he could w^atch 
and criticise. 

A secret committee is only moved for on grave occa- 
sions. An evidence so rapid and so palpable of the results 
of Mr. Gladstone's operations was an opportunity for the 
exercise of Mr. Disraeli's peculiar powers. Of late years he 
had been sparing in his sarcasms. His speeches had been 

' Lady Beaconsfield enjoyed her honours only for four years. She 
died December 15, 1872. 

P 2 



212 LORD BEACONSFIELD 

serious and argumentative, and the rapier and the whip lash 
had been laid aside. But they were lying ready for him, and 
he had not forgotten his old art. He did not again object 
as he had objected in Peel's case to granting extraordinary 
powers to a Government which he distrusted. He was 
willing to assist the Cabinet, since they needed assistance, in 
maintaining order in Ireland ; Lord Hartington had re- 
minded him that he had himself made a similar application 
in another Parliament. But he confessed his astonishment 
that such an application should be necessary. ' The noble 
lord,' he said, 'has made some reference, from that rich- 
ness of precedent with which he has been crammed on this 
occasion, to what occurred in 1852 ; and in the midst of the 
distress of this regenerating Government of Ireland sup- 
ported by a hundred legions and elected by an enthusiastic 
people in order to terminate the grievances of that country 
and secure its contentment and tranquillity, he must needs 
dig up our poor weak Government of 1852 and say, " There 
was Mr. Napier, your attorney-general : he moved for a com- 
mittee, and you were a member of his Cabinet." If I had 
had a majority of a hundred behind my back I would not 
have moved for that committee. I did the best I could. 
But was the situation in which I was placed similar to the 
situation of her Majesty's present Ministers ? Look for a 
moment to the relations which this Government bears to 
the House of Commons with regard to the administration 
of Ireland. The right hon, gentleman opposite (Mr. 
Gladstone) was elected for a specific purpose. He was the 
Minister who alone was able to cope with these long-enduring 
and mysterious evils that had tortured and tormented the 
civilisation of England. The right hon. gentleman per- 
suaded the people of England that with regard to Irish 



EFFECTS OF MR. GLADSTONE'S POLICY 2l3 

politics he was in possession of the philosopher's stone. 
Well, sir, he has been returned to this House with an 
immense majority, with the object of securing the tranquillity 
and content of Ireland. Has anything been grudged him — 
time, labour, devotion ? Whatever has been proposed has 
been carried. Under his influence, and at his instance, we 
have legalised confiscation, we have consecrated sacrilege, 
w^e have condoned treason, we have destroyed Churches, we 
have shaken property to its foundations, and we have emptied 
gaols ; and now he cannot govern one county without coming 
to a Parliamentary committee. The right hon. gentleman, 
after all his heroic exploits, and at the head of his great 
majority, is making government ridiculous.' 

'We have legalised confiscation, w^e have consecrated 
sacrilege, we have condoned treason,' pronounced with 
drawling alliteration, was worth a whole Parliamentary 
campaign. Everyone recollected the words from the neat- 
ness of the combination ; everyone felt and acknowledged 
their biting justice. No one was a match for Disraeli in 
the use of the rapier. The composition of such sentences 
was an intellectual pleasure to him. A few years later, when 
the Prince Imperial was killed in South Africa, he observed, 
on hearing of it, ' A very remarkable people the Zulus : 
they defeat our generals, they convert our bishops*, they 
have settled the fate of a great European dynasty.' 

No Government was ever started on an ambitious career 
with louder pretensions or brighter promises than Mr. 
Gladstone's Cabinet in 1868. In less than three years 
their glory was gone, the aureole had faded from their 
brows. The bubble of oratory, which had glowed with all 
the colours of the rainbow, had burst when in contact with 
fact, and the poor English people had awoke to the dreary 



214 LORD BEACONSFIELD 

conviction that it was but vapour after all. In April, 1872, 
the end was visibly coming, and Disraeli could indulge 
again, at their expense, in his malicious mockery. In a 
speech at Manchester he said : 

' The stimulus is subsiding. The paroxysms ended 
in prostration. Some took refuge in melancholy, and their 
eminent chief alternated between a menace and a sigh. As 
I sat opposite the Treasury bench, the Ministers reminded 
me of those marine landscapes not unusual on the coasts 
of South America. You behold a range of exhausted 
volcanoes. Not a flame flickers on a single pallid crest. 
But the situation is still dangerous. There are occasional 
earthquakes, and ever and anon the dark rumbling of the 
sea. 



'lothair' 215 



CHAPTER XV 

The calm of satisfied ambition — A new novel—' Lothair ' — Survey of 
English society — The modern aristocracy — Forces working on the 
surface and below it — Worship of rank — Cardinal Grandison — 
Revolutionary socialism — Romeward drift of the higher classes— 
' Lothair ' by far the most remarkable of all Disraeli's writings. 

"Once again in Opposition, Disraeli found leisure to return 
to his early occupations. As a politician, and at the head 
of a minority for the time hopelessly weak, he had merely 
to look on and assist, by opportune sarcasms, the ebb of 
Liberal popularity. 

In this comparative calm he resumed his profession as 
a novelist, which he had laid aside for more than twenty 
years, and delivered himself of a work immeasurably 
superior to anything of the kind which he had hitherto 
produced. ' Vivian Grey ' and ' Contarini Fleming ' were 
portraits of himself, drawn at an age of vanii.y and self- 
consciousness. ' Henrietta Temple ' and ' Venetia ' were 
clever stories — written, probably, because he wanted money 
— but without the merit or the interest which would have 
given them a permanent place in English literature. The 
famous trilogy, 'Coningsby,' 'Sybil,' and 'Tancred,' though 
of far greater value, have the fatal defect, as works of art, 
that they were avowedly written for a purpose. ' Lothair ' 
has none of these faults — Disraeli himself is imperceptible ; 
the inner meaning of the book does not lie upon the 



2l6 LORD BEACONSFIELD 

surface. It was supposed, on its first appearance, to be a 
vulgar glorification of the splendours of the great English 
nobles into whose society he had been admitted as a 
parvenu^ and whose condescension he rewarded by painting 
them in their indolent magnificence. The glitter and tinsel 
was ascribed to a Jewish taste for tawdry decoration, while 
he, individually, was thought to be glutted to satiation in the 
social Paradise, like ' Ixion at the feasts of the gods.' 
The divinities themselves were amused and forgiving. They 
did not resent — perhaps they secretly liked — the coloured 
photographs in which they saw themselves depicted. The 
life which Disraeli described was really their own, draw^n 
naturally, without envy or malice ; a life in which they en- 
joyed every pleasure which art could invent or fortune 
bestow, w^here they could discharge their duties to society 
by simply existing, and where they had the satisfaction 
of knowing that, by the mere gratification of their wishes, 
they were providing employment for multitudes of de- 
pendents. They had cultivated the graces of perfected 
humanity in these splendid surroundings, and ' Lothair ' 
was accepted as a voluntary offering of not undeserved 
homage. 

In all Disraeli's writings, from his earliest age, there is 
traceable a conviction that no country could prosper under 
a free Constitution, without an aristocracy with great duties 
and great privileges ; an aristocracy who, as leaders of the 
people, should be their examples also of manliness and 
nobility of character. He had observed how, as political 
power had passed away from the English peers, while their 
wealth remained, and increased, their habits had become 
more self-indulgent — they had become a superior but socially 
exclusive caste. They were still an estate of the realm, 



*lothair' 217 

but they had become, hke the gods of Epicurus, hfted 
above the toils and troubles of this mortal world, still 
feeding on the offerings which continued to smoke upon 
the altars, but of no definite use, and likely, it might be, to 
lose their celestial thrones, should mankind cease to believe 
in them. The occupation of the Elysians in the ' Infernal 
Marriage ' was to go to operas and plays and balls, to wander 
in the green shades of the forest, to canter in light-hearted 
cavalcades over breezy downs, to banquet with the beautiful 
and the witty, to send care to the devil, and indulge the 
whim of the moment. It was easy to see w^ho were meant 
by the Elysians. Privileged mortals they might be, but 
mortals out of whom, unless they roused themselves, no 
future rulers would ever rise to govern again the English 
nation. The Emperor Julian imagined that he could 
galvanise the dead gods of Paganism ; Disraeli, believing 
that an aristocracy of some kind was a political necessity, 
had dreamt of an awakening of the young generation of 
English nobles to the heroic virtues of the age of the 
Plantagenets. 

A quarter of a century had gone by since he had sent 
Tancred for inspiration to Mount Sinai. During all that 
time he had lived himself within the privileged circle. He 
had not over-estimated the high native qualities of the 
patrician lords and dames, but he had recognised the 
futility of his imaginations. They were as little capable of 
change as Venus and Apollo, and in his enforced leisure 
he drew their likenesses, with a light satire — so light that 
they failed to perceive it. The students of English history 
in time to come, who would know what the nobles of 
England were like in the days of Queen Victoria, will read 
' Lothair ' with the same interest with which they read 



2l8 LORD BEACONSFIELD 

' Horace ' and ' Juvenal.' When Disraeli wrote, they were 
in the zenith of their magnificence. The industrial energy 
of the age had doubled their already princely revenues 
without effort of their own. They were the objects of 
universal homage — partly a vulgar adulation of rank, partly 
the traditionary reverence for their order, which had not 
yet begun to wane. Though idleness and flattery had 
done their work to spoil them, they retained much of the 
characteristics of a high-born race. Even Carlyle thought 
that they were the best surviving specimens of the ancient 
English. But their self-indulgence had expanded with their 
incomes. Compared with the manners of the modern 
palace or castle, the habits of their grandfathers and grand- 
mothers had been frugality and simplicity : and they had 
no duties — or none which they had been taught to under- 
stand. So they stand before us in ' Lothair.' Those whom 
Elysian pleasures could not satisfy were weary of the rolling 
hours, and for want of occupation are seen drifting among 
the seductions of the Roman harlot ; while from below 
the surface is heard the deep ground-tone of the Euro- 
pean revolution, which may sweep them all away. We 
have no longer the bombast and unreality of the revolu- 
tionary epic. Disraeli has still the same subject before 
him, but he treats it with the mellow calmness of matured 
experience. He writes as a man of the world, with perfect 
mastery of his material, without a taint of ill-nature — with a 
frank perception of the many and great excellences of the 
patrician families, of the charm and spirit of the high-born 
matrons and girls, of the noble capabilities of their fathers 
and brothers, paralysed by the enchantment which con- 
demns them to uselessness. They stand on the canvas like 
the heroes and heroines of Vandyck ; yet the sense never 



' LOTHAIR ' 2 19 

leaves us that they are but flowers of the hothouse, artifi- 
cially forced into splendour, with no root in outer nature, 
and therefore of no continuance. 

The period of the story was the immediate year in 
which Disraeli was writing. The characters, though in but 
few instances portraits of living men and women, were 
exactly, even ludicrously, true to the prevailing type. We 
are introduced on the first page into a dukery the grandest 
of its kind ; the owner of it, f/ie duke, being too great to 
require a name, while minor dukes move like secondary 
planets in the surrounding ether. 

T/ze duke has but one sorrow — that he has no home, 
his many palaces requiring a periodic residence at each. 
He is consoled each morning in his dressing-room, when he 
reviews his faultless person, by the reflection that his family 
were worthy of him. The hero is an ingenuous, pure-minded 
youth, still under age, though fast approaching his majority, 
the heir of enormous possessions, which, great as they de- 
scended from his father, have been increased to fabulous 
proportions by the progress of the country. His expectations 
rather oppress than give him pleasure, for he is full of 
generous aspirations, to which he knows not how to give 
effect. He feels only that his wealth will give him boundless 
powers for good or evil, and all that his natural piety and 
simplicity can tell him is that he ought to do something good 
with it. In an ordinary novel, a youth so furnished would 
be the natural prey of scheming mothers. Disraeli makes 
him the intended victim of a far more subtle conspiracy. 
His rank is vaguely indicated as only second to that of the 
duke himself. An absurd and unnatural consequence 
attaches to him in society, and he is marked as a prey by 
the power which aims at recovering England to the Church 



220 LORD BEACONSFIELD 

of Rome by the conversion of lords and ladies. He is 
exposed to temptation through the innocence of his nature. 
Of his guardians, one is a Scotch Presbyterian earl, narrow, 
rugged, and honest ; the other, a distinguished clergyman of 
the Anglican Church, an early friend of his father, who has 
' gone over ' to Rome, risen to high rank, and is at the head 
of the English Mission. The personaHty of this eminent 
man is visibly composed of the late Cardinal Wiseman and 
his successor, who is still present among us, and is so 
favourably known by his exertions for the improvement 
of the people. The function of Cardinal Grandison, as 
Disraeli represents him, is the propagation of Catholic truth 
among patrician circles. He has operated successfully on 
young and beautiful countesses, who, in turn, have worked 
upon their husbands. 

The first converts of the apostles were the poor and the 
unknown. The Cardinal's superficial, but not altogether 
groundless, calculation, was that if he could convert earls and 
countesses, the social influence of those great persons would 
carry the nation after them. Lothair, with his enormous 
fortune, would be a precious acquisition. His boyhood had 
been spent in Scotland, and, through his guardians' pre- 
cautions, the Cardinal has no opportunities of influencing 
him — indeed, had scarcely seen him. They meet when he 
enters the world. Their connection places them on terms 
of immediate intimacy, and the web is spun round the 
fly with exquisite skill. Lothair is naturally religious, and 
no direct attempts are made upon his faith. Theological dif- 
ferences are treated with offhand ease ; but he finds himself 
imperceptibly drawn into Catholic society. Accomplished 
Monsignori are ever at his side. Great ladies treat him with 
affectionate confidence, and he is delighted with an element 



'LOTH air' 221 

where the highest breeding is sanctified by spiritual devotion. 
More dehcate attractions are brought to bear — a lovely girl, 
so angelic that she is intended for a convent, lets him see 
that her destiny may, perhaps, be changed if she can find a 
husband with a spirit like her own. Lothair sinks rapidly 
under the combination of enchantments. An immense 
balance lies at his bankers, the accumulations of his minority. 
His conversations with Miss Arundel convince him that he 
must build a cathedral in London with it. It never occurred 
to him— nobody had even suggested to him — that his rent- 
roll entailed responsibilities towards the thousands of working 
families who were his own dependents, and by whose toil 
that wealth had been created. To build a cathedral, at any 
rate, would be a precious achievement — whether Catholic 
or Protestant might be decided when it was completed. He 
was, himself, the only person who seemed ignorant which it 
was to be. 

The spell which was cast by a lady, could be broken 
only by another lady's hand. Before Lothair is finally sub- 
dued, accident brings him in contact with Theodora, the 
wife of a rich American, dazzlingly beautiful, the incarnation 
of the Genius of the European revolution, to which her 
devotion is as intense as that of Miss Arundel to the 
Catholic Church. Two emotional impulses divide at present 
the minds of the passionate and the restless. The timid see 
salvation only in the reunion of Christendom and the re- 
turning protection of the Virgin. The bold and generous, 
weary of the cants, the conventionalisms, and unrealities of 
modern life, fling themselves into the revolutionary torrent, 
which threatens the foundations of existing civilisation. 

In the convulsions of 1848, the revolutionary societies 
had shaken half the thrones in Europe. Disraeli, whose 



222 LORD BEACONSFIELD 

vision, unlike that of most contemporary statesmen, was 
not limited to the coming session, but looked before and 
after, had watched these two tendencies all through his life, 
well aware that they would have more to do with the future 
of mankind than the most ingenious Parliamentary man- 
oeuvrings. While Premier he had learnt much of the 
working of the republican propaganda in France, Germany, 
and Russia. In the Irish Conspiracy, Catholic priests had 
been found, curiously, co-operating with American Fenians. 
Particular persons had fallen under his notice who were un- 
known to the outside world. At the moment when Lothair's 
future is hanging in the balance, he is led into relation with 
the fascinating representative of the revolutionary spirit. 
Theodora, whom Disraeli evidently likes better than any 
one else in the book, had been devoted from childhood to 
the cause of liberty. Her father and brothers had been 
killed in the fights of 1848. She herself, an orphan and an 
exile, had wandered to Paris, had sung in the streets, had 
been received into the secret associations, where, for her 
beauty and her genius, she had been regarded as a tutelary 
saint. 

Pure as snow, Theodora had no thought but for the cause. 
The women worshipped her, the men idolised her. Like 
Rachel, she had electrified the Paris mob by starting forward 
at a great moment, and singing the ' Marseillaise.' She was 
the Mary Anne of the universal conspiracy against the existing 
tyranny which was called order, and a word from her at any 
moment could kindle the fire into a blaze. At the moment 
when this lady, an idealised Margaret Fuller, is introduced 
upon the scene, her thoughts are concentrated on the delivery 
of Rome from the Papacy. Thus simultaneously the two 
enthusiasms were centred on the same spot. The Catholic 



'lothair' 223 

devotees were dreaming of the reunion of Christendom. 
Pio Nono was to summon an Ecumenical Council which 
was to be the greatest event of the century. To the revo- 
lutionists Rome was the mystic centre of European liberty. 
Rome being once free, and the detested priests made an 
end of, the Genius of Evil would spread its wings and depart, 
and mankind would at last be happy. Louis Napoleon was 
the uncertain element in the situation. Would he continue 
to support the Pope, or leave him to his fate ? 

The two parties watched each other, waiting the decision, 
and Theodora and her husband are in England, living at 
Belmont, a villa on the edge of Wimbledon, with an artistic 
and intellectual circle of friends. Here Lothair is introduced. 
He finds himself in an atmosphere delightful, yet entirely 
strange to him, presided over by a divine being. The lady 
is ten years older than himself, on the best terms with her 
American, and without further room in her heart for any but 
ideal objects. Disraeli contrives, with extraordinary skill, to 
let the fascination exercise its full power without degenerat- 
ing into a vulgar intrigue. All is airy and spiritual. Lothair 
was on the edge of becoming a Catholic, because ' society 
ought to be religious.' Theodora is as ' religious ' as Miss 
Arundel, but with a religion independent of dogma. Lie 
confides in her, tells her of his struggles, confesses his de- 
votion to herself. When his passion takes too warm a tone 
she gently waives it aside with a grace which intensifies the 
affection without allowing it to degrade itself. 

Cardinal Grandison and his countesses are watching for 
their council, which is to be the ' event of the century.' To 
Lothair the great ' event ' is his own coming of age, and 
the celebration of it at his magnificent castle. Dukes and 
earls, bishops and cardinals, Monsignori and English clergy, 



224 LORD BEACONSFIELD 

sheriffs and county magistrates, gather at Muriel for the 
occasion, and Theodora and her husband are specially- 
invited guests. All that is loyallest and brightest in the 
English nation is brought out in Lothair's welcome to his 
inheritance. The object is to show the unadulterated 
respect which still remains for our great nobles, the future 
which is still within their reach if they know how to seize 
it — a respect, however, tinged slightly with artificiality and 
unreality in the exaggeration of the outward splendour. 
As a by-play, the chiefs of the two Churches continue their 
struggle for Lothair's soul. The ' Bishop,' a well-known 
prelate of those days, and a college friend of Cardinal 
Grandison before their creed had divided them, now 
meet in the lists, followed by their respective acolytes. 
The Bishop and the Anglican countesses arrange an early 
' celebration ' in the chapel, where Lothair is to renew his 
vows to the Church of his fathers. The Catholics look at 
it as a magical rite, which may spoil the work which they 
arc hoping to accomplish. The sureness of foot with 
which Disraeli moves in these intricate labyrinths, the easy 
grace with which the various actors play their parts, might 
tempt one to forget what a piece of gilded tinsel it all is, but 
for the disbelieving interjections of common sense from less 
devout spectators. St. Aldegonde, the most attractive of all 
the male characters in the book, a patrician of the patricians 
and the heir of a dukedom, affects Radicalism of the reddest 
kind. Bored with the emptiness of an existence which he 
knows not how to amend, a man who in other times might 
have ridden beside King Richard at Ascalon, or charged 
with the Black Prince at Poitiers, lounges through life in 
good-humoured weariness of amusements which will not 
amuse, and outrages conventionalism by his frank con- 



'lothair' 225 

tempt for humbug. Him they had not dared to invite to be 
present at the ' celebration.' On a Sunday morning, when 
the party generally were observing the ordinary proprieties, 
he appears in the breakfast-room in rough and loose week- 
day costume, pushes his hands through his dishevelled locks, 
and exclaims, as he stands before the fire, regardless of the 
Bishop's presence, ' How I hate Sundays ! ' The Bishop 
makes a dignified retreat. When St. Aldegonde's wife gently 
reproves him, he adds impenitently to his sins, saying, ' I 
don't like bishops, I don't see the use of them ; but I have 
no objection to him personally. I think him an agreeable 
man, not at all a bore. Just put it right. Bertha,' &c. St. 
Aldegonde is a perfect specimen of a young English noble, 
who will not cant or lie ; the wisest and truest when counsel 
or action is needed of him, yet with his fine qualities all 
running to waste in a world where there is no employment 
for them. 

Neither Bishop nor Cardinal secure their prey. Theo- 
dora carries the day. The French withdraw from Rome ; 
she has secret information that they are not to return, and 
that the secret societies are ready to move. The opportunity 
has arrived. Nothing is wanted but arms and money. The 
cathedral is abandoned, the accumulations of Lothair's 
minority are thrown into Theodora's hands, and he himself 
enters into the campaign for the liberation of Rome. 

A republican general, who has been incidentally seen 
before, a friend of Mazzini and Garibaldi, now appears on 
the scene. From Muriel we pass to an Italian valley on 
the Roman frontier, where a force is collecting to join 
Garibaldi and advance on the Holy City. Theodora is in 
the camp. Rome itself is ready ^o rise on the first glinting 
of their lances, The General moves forw:i-rd, and fights and 

Q 



226 LORD BEACONSFIELD 

wins a battle at Viterbo ; but in the moment of victory all 
is lost. Louis Napoleon has changed his mind, and the 
French return ; a stray shot strikes Theodora, and mortally 
wounds her. The sound of the guns at Civita Vecchia 
saluting the arrival of the French ships reaches her ears as 
she hangs between life and death. Her heart breaks ; her 
last words are to tell Lothair that 'another and a more 
powerful attempt will be made to gain him to the Church of 
Rome,' and she demands and obtains a promise from him 
that ' he will never enter that communion.' 

When he wrote 'Coningsby' and ' Sybil,' DisraeH regretted 
the Reformation. The most ardent admirer of the Middle 
Ages did not regard the overthrow of the ecclesiastical rule, 
and the suppression of the religious houses, with more dis- 
pleasure, or believed more devotedly in the virtues of the 
abbots and the beneficent working of the monastic system. 
In his 'Life of Lord George Bentinck' he had so far 
changed his mind that he refuses to Roman Catholic the 
dignity of capital letters. Twenty additional years of ex- 
perience had taught him that the modern Roman hierarchy 
was as unscrupulous as the Reformers had described their 
predecessors, and that, of the many dangers which threatened 
England, there was none more insidious than the intrigues 
of ultramontane proselytisers. 

The battle of Mentana follows, and Garibaldi's defeat 
by the French. Lothair is shot down at the General's side, 
and is left for dead on the field. Being found breathinp;. 
he is taken up with the other wounded. Ris English 
Catholic friends are in Rome for the winter, and devote 
themselves to the care of the hospitals. An Italian woman 
brings word to Miss AmnJel that one of her countrymen 
is lying at the point of death, wb^ may be recovered if she 



^ LOTHAIR ' 227 

takes charge of him. He is found to be Lothair, and the 
opportunity is seized for a thaumaturgical performance as 
remarkable as the miracle-working at Lourdes. The woman 
who brought the account is discovered, by a halo round her 
head, to have been the Virgin in person ; Lothair, unknown to 
himself, to have fallen not as a Garibaldian but as a volunteer 
in the Papal army. He is carried, unconscious, to the 
enchanter's cave, in the shape of a room in the Agostini 
Palace. He is watched over while in danger by a beautiful 
veiled figure. He is surrounded in convalescence by adroit 
Monsignori, and prevailed on to assist in a ceremony which 
is represented to him as a mere thanksgiving for his recovery, 
but in which he finds himself walking first in a procession, 
candle in hand, at Miss Arundel's side, she and he the special 
objects of the Virgin's care. The next morning the whole 
performance is published in full in the ' Papal Gazette,' 
and his Cardinal guardian then appears on the stage, to tell 
him that he is ' the most favoured of men,' and that the 
Holy Father in person will immediately receive him into 
the Church. 

Too weak from illness to express his indignation in more 
than words, he protests against the insolent deceit. No- 
where in English fiction is there any passage where the 
satire is more delicate than in the Cardinal's rejoinder. 
Lothair opens a window into DisraeH's mind, revealing 
the inner workings of it more completely than anything else 
which he wrote or said. For this reason I have given so 
many pages to the analysis of it, and must give one or two 
more. 

' " I know there are two narratives of your relations with 
the battle of Mentana," observed the Cardinal, quietly. 
" The one accepted as authentic is that which appears in this. 

Q2 



228 LORD BEACONSli'IELD 

Journal ; the other account, which can only be traced to 
yourself, has, no doubt, a somewhat different character. 
But considering that it is in the highest degree improbable, 
and that there is not a tittle of collateral or confirmatory 
evidence to extenuate its absolute unlikelihood, I hardly 
think you are justified in using, with reference to the state- 
ments in this article the harsh expressions which I am per- 
suaded on reflection you will feel you have hastily used." 

"'I think," said Lothair, with a kindling eye and a burning 
cheek, " that I am the best judge of what I did at Mentana." 

' " Well, well," said the Cardinal, with dulcet calmness, 
"you naturally think so ; but you must remember you have 
been very ill, my dear young friend, and labouring under 
much excitement. If I was you — and I speak as your 
friend — I would not dwell too much on this fancy of yours 
about the battle of Mentana. I would, myself, always deal 
tenderly with a fixed idea. Nevertheless, in the case of a 
public event, a matter of fact, if a man finds that he is of 
one opinion, and all orders of society of another, he should 
not be encouraged to dwell on a perverted creed. Your case 
is by no means an uncommon one. It will wear off with 
returning health. King George IV. believed he commanded 
at the battle of Waterloo, and his friends were at one time 
a little alarmed ; but Knighton, who was a sensible man, 
said, ' His Majesty has only to leave off Curagoa, and, rest 
assured, he will gain no more victories.' Remember, sir, 
where you are. You are in the centre of Christendom, 
where truth, and alone truth, resides. Divine authority has 
perused this paper, and approved it. It is published for the 
joy and satisfaction of two hundred millions of Christians, 
and for the salvation of all those who, unhappily for them- 
selves, are not yet converted to the faith. It records the 



' LOTHAIR ^ 229 

most memorable event of this century. Our Blessed Lady 
has personally appeared to her votaries before during that 
period, but never at Rome ; wisely and well she has worked 
in villages, as did her Divine Son, But the time is now ripe 
for terminating the infidelity of the world. In the Eternal 
City, amid all its matchless learning and profound theology, 
in the sight of thousands, this great act has been accom- 
plished in a manner which can admit of no doubt and lead 
to no controversy. Some of the most notorious atheists of 
Rome have already solicited to be admitted to the offices of 
the Church. The secret societies have received their death- 
blow. I look to the alienation of England as virtually over. 
I am panting to see you return to the home of your fathers, 
and recover it for the Church in the name of the Lord God 
of Sabaoth. Never was a man in a greater position since 
Godfrey or Ignatius. The eyes of all Christendom are 
upon you, as the most favoured of men, and you stand there 
like St. Thomas." 

' " Perhaps he was bewildered, as I am," said Lothair. 

' " Well, his bewilderment ended in his becoming an 
apostle, as yours will. I am glad we have had this conver- 
sation, and that we agree. I knew we should. To-morrow 
the Holy Father will himself receive you into the bosom of 
the Church. Christendom will then hail you as its champion 
and regenerator." ' 

Conscious that he was the victim of a lying conspiracy, 
yet as if his will was magnetised, he finds himself driven to 
the slaughter, 'a renegade without conviction.' He is 
virtually a prisoner, but he contrives at night to pass the 
Palace gate, wander about the ghostly city, and at last into 
the Coliseum, where Benvenuto Cellini had seen a vision of 
devils, and Lothair imagines that he sees Theodora, who 



230 LORD BEACONSFIELD 

reminds him of her warning. He is brought back, senseless, 
by a spiritual sleuth-hound who had been sent after him ; 
and the result was, that on the morning which was to have 
made the unfortunate Lord of Muriel a Papist against his 
will, he is visited by an English doctor, 'who abhorred 
priests, and did not particularly admire ladies.' He is 
ordered instant change of scene, and is sent to Sicily — still 
in the custody of ' familiars ' ; but he evades their vigilance, 
embarks in a fishing-boat, reaches Malta and an English 
yacht — and thenceforward his fortunes brighten again. He 
visits the Greek islands. Of course he must go to Jerusalem 
— all Disraeli's heroes who want spiritual comfort are sent 
to Jerusalem — not, however, any longer to see visions ot 
angels, but to find a ' Paraclete ' in a Syrian Christian from 
the Lake of Gennesaret, an Ebionite of the primitive type, 
whose religion was a simple following of Christ. 

In recovered health of mind and body, Lothair returns 
to England, where he finds the world as he had left 
it. He supposes his adventures would be on everyone's 
lips. His acquaintances ask him, coolly, what he has been 
doing with himself, and how long he has been in town. 
The Cardinal is again gliding through the gilded drawing- 
rooms, but ignores the Roman incident as if it had never 
been. Miss Arundel subsides into her sacred vocation. 
The hero, freed from further persecution, marries the 
beautiful daughter of the duke, who had been the object 
of his boyish affection — a lady, needless to say, of staunchest 
Protestant integrity. 

Such is ' Lothair,' perhaps the first novel ever written by 
a man who had previously been Prime Minister of England. 
Every page glitters with wit or shines with humour. Special 
scenes and sentences are never to be forgotten : the Tourna- 



'LOTHAIR* 231 

ment of Doves at the Putney Villa, where the ladies gather 
to see their lords at their favourite summer amusement; 
the wounded blue rock, which w^as contented to die by 
the hand of a duke, but rose and fluttered over a paling, 
disdaining to be worried by a terrier; the artist who 
hesitates over a mission to Egypt, but reflects that no one 
has ever drawn a camel, and that, if he went, a camel would 
at last be drawn; the definition of critics — as those who 
had failed in literature and art. But the true value of 
the book is the perfect representation of patrician society in 
England in the year w^hich w^as then passing over ; the 
full appreciation of all that was good and noble in it ; yet 
the recognition, also, that it was a society without a purpose, 
and with no claim to endurance. It was then in its most 
brilliant period, like the full bloom of a flower which opens 
fully only to fade. 



232 LORD BEACONSFIELD 



CHAPTER XVI 

The exhausted volcanoes — Mr. Gladstone's failure and unpopularity — 
Ireland worse than before — Loss of influence in Europe — The 
election of 1874 — Great Conservative majority — Disraeli again 
Prime Minister with real power — His general position as a politi- 
cian — Problems waiting to be dealt with — The relations between 
the Colonies and the Empire — The restoration of the authority of the 
law in Ireland — Disraeli's strength and Disraeli's weakness — Prefers 
an ambitious foreign policy — Russia and Turkey — The Eastern 
Question — Two possible policies and the effects of each — Disraeli's 
choice — Threatened war with Russia — -The Berlin Conference- 
Peace with honour — ^Jingoism and fall of the Conservative party — 
Other features of his administration — Goes to the House of Lords as 
Earl of Beaconsfield and receives the Garter — Public Worship Act 
— Admirable distribution of patronage — Disraeli and Carlyle — 
Judgment of a conductor of an omnibus. 

The destinies were fighting for Disraeli. The exhausted 
volcanoes continued on the Treasury bench ; but England 
had grown tired of them. They had been active when 
their activity had been mischievous. In quiescence they 
had allowed the country to become contemptible. The 
defeat of France and the establishment of a great German 
empire had changed the balance of power in Europe. 
England had not been consulted, and had no voice in 
the new arrangements. Russia took advantage of the 
confusion to tear up the Black Sea Treaty, and throw the 
fragments in our faces. The warmest Radical enthusiast 



CONSERVATIVE REACTION 333 

Could not defend the imbecility with which the outrage 
was submitted to. A Minister was sent to Paris to inform 
Prince Bismarck that, if Russia persisted, we should go to 
war. When Russia refused to be frightened, the uncertain 
Premier said in Parliament that the Minister had exceeded 
his instructions. It appeared, on inquiry, that the instruc- 
tions had not been exceeded, but that nothing had been 
meant but an idle menace, which had failed of its effect. 
The English people, peculiarly sensitive about the respect 
paid to their country abroad, because they feel that it is 
declining, resented the insult from the Russians upon the 
Cabinet, which was charged with pusillanimity. The settle- 
ment of the Alabama claims, though prudent and right, 
was no less humiliating. The generous policy which was 
to have won the Irish heart had exasperated one party 
without satisfying the other. The third branch of the 
upas tree still waited for the axe. The minds even of 
Radicals could not yet reconcile themselves to the terms 
of a concordat which would alone satisfy the Catholic 
hierarchy. The Premier, deceived by the majority which 
still appeared to support him, disregarded the rising 
murmurs. He had irritated powerful interests on all sides, 
from the army to the licensed victuallers ; while of work 
achieved he had nothing to show but revolutionary measures 
in Ireland, which had hitherto been unattended with 
success. The bye-elections showed with increasing dis- 
tinctness the backward swing of the political pendulum, 
and very marked indeed at this time was the growth of the 
personal popularity of Disraeli. At least, he had made no 
professions, and had ventured no extravagant prophecies. 
He had always stood up staunchly for the honour of his 
country. Brief as had been his opportunities of office, he 



234 LORD BEACONSFIELD 

had accomplished, after all, more positive practical good than 

his rivals who boasted so loudly. Their function had been 

to abolish old-established institutions, and the effect had 

been but a turn of the kaleidoscope — a new pattern, and 

nobody much the better for it. Disraeli had been contented 

with a 'policy of sewage,' as it was disdainfully called.. He 

had helped to drain London ; he had helped to shorten the 

hours of children's labour. His larger exploit had been to 

bring the Jews into Parliament, and to bring under the 

crown the government of India. Sensible people might 

question the wisdom of his Reform Bill, but he had shown, 

at any rate, that he was not afraid of the people ; and the 

people, on their side, were proud of a man who had raised 

himself to so high a place in the face of thirty years of 

insult and obloquy. His position was the triumph of the 

most respectable of Radical principles — the rule to him that 

deserves to rule. They came to call him Dizzy ; and there 

is no surer sign that a man is liked in England than the 

adoption of a pet name for him. His pungent sayings were 

repeated from lip to lip. He never courted popular 

demonstrations, but if he was seen in the streets he was 

followed by cheering crowds. At public meetings Avhich 

had no party character he was the favourite of the hour. 

At a decorous and dignified assembly where royalties were 

present, and the chiefs of both political parties, I recollect 

a burst of emotion when Disraeli rose which, for several 

minutes, prevented him from speaking, the display of 

feeling being the more intense the lower the strata which 

it penetrated, the very waiters whirling their napkins with 

a passion which I never on any such occasion saw exceeded 

or equalled. 

Mr. Gladstone was inattentive to the symptoms of the 



DISRAELI RETURNS TO POWER 235 

temper of the people, and proceeded with his Irish Educa- 
tion Bill. The secularist Radicals were dissatisfied with a 
proposal which gave ' too much power to the Catholic 
priests. The Court of Rome and the Irish bishops were 
dissatisfied because it did not give enough. Impatient of 
opposition, Mr. Gladstone punished Parliament with a dis- 
solution, and was astonished at the completeness of his 
overthrow. 

For the first time since 1841 a strong Conservative 
majority was returned, independent of Irish support — a 
majority large and harmonious enough to discourage a hope 
of reducing it either by intrigue or by bye-elections. 
England, it really seemed, had recovered from her revolu- 
tionary fever-fit, and desired to be left in quiet after half- 
a-century of political dissipation. Seven or six years ot 
Conservative administration were now secured. There 
were those who shook their heads, disbelieved in any 
genuine reaction till lower depths had been reached, and 
declared that ' it was only the licensed victuallers.' Mr. 
Gladstone's long Parliamentary experience led him to think 
that, at any rate, it would last out the remainder of his own 
working life, and that his political reign was over. Disraeli 
had taken Fortune's buffets and Fortune's favours with equal 
composure, and had remained calm under the severest 
discomfitures. Mr. Gladstone retired from the leadership 
of the Liberal party, and left Lord Hartington to repair the 
consequences of his own precipitancy. ' Power,' the Greek 
proverb says, 'will show what a man is.' Till this time 
DisraeU had held office but on sufferance. He was now 
trusted by the country with absolute authority, and it 
remained to be seen what he would make of it. He could do 
what he pleased. He could dictate the foreign and colonial 



236 LORD BEACONSFIELD 

policy. He was master of the fleet and the army. He had 
made hmiself sovereign of England, so long as his party 
were true to him ; and the long eclipse through which he 
had conducted them to eventual triumph guaranteed their 
fidelity. He had won his authority, not by the favour of a 
sovereign, not by having been the champion of any powerful 
interest, but by the personal confidence in himself which 
was felt by the body of the people. 

He was now to show whether he was or was not a really 
great man. In his early career he had not concealed that 
his chief motive was ambition. He had started as a soldier 
of fortune, and he had taken service with the party among 
whom, perhaps, he felt that he would have the best 
chance of rising to eminence. Young men of talent were 
chiefly in the other camp — among the Conservatives he 
might expect fewer rivals. But the side which he had 
chosen undoubtedly best suited the character of his own 
mind ; under no circumstances could Disraeli have been a 
popular apostle of progress, or have taught with a grave 
face the doctrines of visionary freedom. He regarded all 
that as nonsense, even as insincere nonsense, not believed 
in even by its advocates. On all occasions he had spoken 
his mind freely, careless what prejudice he might offend. 
Even on the abolition of slavery, on which English self- 
applause was innocently sensitive, he alone of public men 
had dared to speak without enthusiasm. The emancipation 
of the negroes, he said in a debate upon the sugar trade, 
' was virtuous but was not wise.' Politics was his profession, 
and as a young barrister aspires to be Lord Chancellor 
Disraeli aspired to rise in the State. He had done the 
Conservatives' work, and the Conservatives had made him 
Prime Minister ; but he had committed himself to few 



PRIME MINISTER 23/ 

definite opinions, and, unlike most other great men who had 
attained the same position, he was left with a comparatively 
free hand. I^ord Burghley was called to the helm to do a 
definite thing ; to steer his country through the rocks and 
shoals of the Reformation. His course was marked out 
for him, and the alternatives were success or the scaffold. 
Disraeli had the whole ocean open, to take such course as 
might seem prudent or attractive. There was no special 
measure which he had received a mandate to carry through, 
no detailed policy which he had advocated which the country 
~was enabling him to execute. He was sincerely and loyally 
anxious to serve the interests of the British Empire and 
restore its diminished influence, but in deciding what was to 
be done it was natural that he would continue to be guided 
by an ambition to make his Ministry memorable, and by the 
cosmopolitan and oriental temperament of his own mind. 

Two unsettled problems lay before him after his Cabinet 
was formed, both of which he knew to be of supreme im- 
portance. Ireland, he was well aware, could not remain in 
the condition in which it had been left by his predecessors. 
The Land Act of 1870 had cut the sinews of the organisa- 
tion under which Ireland had been ruled since the Act of 
Settlement. The rights of owners were complicated with 
the rights of tenants, and the tenants had been taught that 
by persevering in insubordination they might themselves 
become the owners altogether. The passions of the Irish 
nation had been excited ; they had been led to believe that 
the late measures were a first step towards the recovery of 
their independence. Seeds of distraction had been sown 
broadcast, which would inevitably sprout at the first favour- 
able season. A purely English Minister with no thought 
but for English interests, and put in possession of sufficient 



238 LORD BEACONSFIELD 

power to make himself obeyed, would, I think, have seized 
the opportunity to reorganise the internal government of 
Ireland. The land question might have been adjusted on 
clear and equitable lines, the just rights secured of owners 
and occupiers alike. The authority of the law could have 
been restored, nationalist visions extinguished, and a per- 
manent settlement arrived at which might have lasted for 
another century. No one had said more emphatically thaii 
Disraeli that the whole system of Irish administration 
demanded a revolutionary change. He was himself at last 
in a position to give effect to his own words. This was one 
great subject. The other was the relation of the colonies to 
the mother country. In the heyday of Free Trade, when 
England was to be made the workshop of the world, the 
British Empire had been looked on as an expensive illusion. 
The colonies and India were supposed to contribute nothing 
to our wealth which they would not contribute equally if 
they were independent, while both entailed dangers and 
responsibilities, and in time of war embarrassment and 
weakness. A distinguished Liberal statesman had said that 
the only objection to parting with the colonies was that 
without them England would be so strong that she would 
be dangerous to the rest of the world. These doctrines, 
half avowed, half disguised under specious pleas for self- 
government, had been acted on for a number of years by 
the Liberal authorities at the Colonial Office. The troops 
were recalled from New Zealand, Canada, and Australia. 
Constitutions were granted so unconditional, so completely 
unaccompanied with provisions for the future relations with 
the mother country, that the connection was obviously 
intended to have an early end. These very serious steps 
were taken by a few philosophical statesmen who happened 



PRIME MINISTER 239 

to be in power without that consultation with the nation 
which ought to have preceded an action of such large con- 
sequence. The nation allowed them to go on in unsus- 
picious confidence, and only woke to know what had been 
done when the dismemberment of the Empire came to be 
discussed as a probable event. One is tempted to regret 
that the old forms of ministerial responsibility have gone out 
Gi fashion. They might have served as a check on the pre- 
cipitancy of such over-eager theorists. The country, when 
made aware of what had been designed, spoke with a voice 
so unanimous that they disclaimed their intentions, sheltered 
themselves behind the necessity of leaving the colonies to 
manage their own affairs, and assured the world that they 
desired nothing but to secure colonial loyalty ; but these 
hasty measures had brought about a form of relation which, 
not being designed for continuance, had no element of con- 
tinuance in it j and the ablest men who desire the main- 
tenance of the Empire are now speculating how to supply 
the absence of conditions -which might, have been insisted 
on at the concession of the colonial constitutions, but which 
it is now too late to suggest. 

Disraeli's attention had been strongly drawn to this 
question. He was imperialist in the sense that he thought 
the English the greatest nation in the world and wished to 
keep them so. At the Crystal Palace in 1872 he had 
spoken with contempt and indignation of the policy which 
had been followed, and had indicated that it would be the 
duty of the Conservatives as far as possible to remedy the 
effects of it. His words show that he thought a remedy 
not impossible, and it is worth while to quote them. 

' Gentlemen,' he said, ' if you look to the history of this 
country since the advent of Liberalism forty years ago you 



240 LORD BEACONSFIELD 

will find there has been no effort so continuous, so subtle, 
supported by so much energy, and carried on with so much 
ability and acumen as the attempts of Liberalism to effect 
the disintegration of the Empire of England. And, gentle- 
men, of all its efforts this is the one which has been the 
nearest to success. Statesmen of the highest character, 
writers of the most distinguished ability, the most organised 
and efficient means have been employed in this endeavour. 
' It has been proved to all of us that we have lost money 
by our colonies. It has been shown with precise, with 
mathematical demonstration that there never was a jewel in 
the crown of England that was so truly costly as the pos- 
session of India. How often has it been suggested that we 
should at once emancipate ourselves from this incubus ? 
Well, that result was nearly accomplished. When those 
subtle views were adopted by the country under the plausible 
plea of granting self-government to the colonies I confess 
that I myself thought that the tie was broken. Not that I, 
for one, object to self-government. I cannot conceive how 
our distant colonies can have their affairs administered 
except by self-government. But self-government, in my 
opinion, when it was conceded ought to have been conceded 
as part of a great policy of imperial consolidation. It ought 
to have been accompanied with an imperial tariff, by securi- 
ties for the people of England for the enjoyment of the un- 
appropriated lands which belonged to the sovereign as their 
trustee, and by a military code which should have precisely 
defined the means and the responsibilities by which the 
colonies should be defended, and by which, if necessary, 
this country should call for aid from the colonies themselves. 
It ought, further, to have been accompanied by some repre- 
sentative council in the metropolis which would have brought 



PRIME MINISTER 24I 

the colonies into constant and continuous relations with the 
home Government. All this, however, was omitted because 
those who advised that policy — and I believe their convictions 
were sincere— looked upon the colonies of England, looked 
even upon our connection with India, as a burden on this 
country, viewing everything in a financial aspect, and totally 
passing by those moral and political considerations which 
make nations great and by the influence of which alone men 
are distinguished from animals. 

* Well, what has been the result of this attempt during 
the reign of Liberalism for the disintegration of the Empire ? 
It has entirely failed. But how has it failed ? Through 
the sympathy of the colonies with the mother country. 
They have decided that the Empire shall not be destroyed ; 
and in my opinion no Minister in this country will do his duty 
who neglects any opportunity of reconstructing as much as 
possible our colonial empire and of responding to those 
distant sympathies which may become the source of incalcu- 
lable strength and happiness to this land.' 

A few persons, perhaps many, had hoped from these 
words that Disraeli, when he came into power again, would 
distinguish his term of rule by an effort which, even if it failed 
by immediate result, would have strengthened the bonds 
of good feeling, and if it succeeded, as it might have done, 
would have given him a name in the world's history as great 
as Washington's. Difficult such a task would have been, 
for the political and practical ties had been too completely 
severed ; but the greatness of a statesman is measured by 
the difficulties which he overcomes. Whether it was that 
Disraeli felt that he was growing old, and that he wished 
to signalise his reign by more dazzling exploits which would 
promise immediate results; whether it was that he saw the 

R 



242' LORD BEACONSFIELD 

English nation impatient of the lower rank in the counsels 
of Europe to which it had been reduced by the foreign 
policy of his predecessors, that he conceived that the people 
would respond to his call and would repay a Tory Govern- 
ment which was maintaining the honour of the country by a 
confirmed allegiance ; whether there was something in his 
own character which led him, when circumstances gave him 
an opening, to prefer another course to that which he had 
sketched in the words which I have quoted ; or whether — 
but it is idle to speculate upon motives. He is said to have 
believed that there was a Conservative Trade Wind which 
would blow for many years ; he may have thought that 
Ireland and the colonies might lie over to be dealt with at 
leisure. ' Ceux qui gouvernent,' says Voltaire, ' sont rare- 
ment touches d'une utilite eloignee, tout sensible qu'elle est, 
surtout quand cet avantage futur est balance par les diffi- 
cultes presentes.' The two great problems which he could 
have, if not settled, yet placed on the road to settlement, he 
decided to pass by. He left Ireland to simmer in confusion. 
His zeal for the consolidation of the Empire was satisfied 
by the new title with which he decorated his sovereign. And 
his Administration will be remembered by the part which he 
played in the Eastern question, and by the judgment which 
was passed upon him by the constituencies. Disraeli par- 
ticularly prided himself on his knowledge of the English 
character. He had seen that no Ministers were ever more 
popular in England than the two Pitts ; and they were popu- 
lar because they maintained in arms the greatness of their 
country. He had seen Lord Palmerston borne triumphantly 
into power to fight Russia, and rewarded for the imperfect 
results of the Crimean war with a confidence which was 
continued till his death. But in these instances there had 



THE RUSSO-TURKISH WAR 243 

been, or had seemed to be, a real cause which the nation 
understood and approved. Lord Chatham was winning 
America for the Anglo-Saxon race. His son was defending 
the independence and commerce of England against the 
power of Bonaparte. And Lord Palmerston had persuaded 
the country that its safety was really threatened by Russian 
preponderance. Disraeli strangely failed to perceive that 
times were changed, that the recollections of the Crimean 
war no longer excited enthusiasm, that it was no longer pos- 
sible to speak of Turkey with a serious face as the ' bulwark 
of civiHsation against barbarism.' He was right in supposing 
that his party would go along wath him, and that of the rest the 
scum and froth would be on his side. The multitude would 
shout for war out of excitement, and for war with Russia 
because Russia was a Power with which they supposed we 
could fight with a chance of success. But the serious 
thought of the nation, which always prevails in the end, was 
against him and he could not perceive it. The English 
bishops persuaded Henry V. to pursue his title to the crown 
of France to detach him from schemes of Church reform. 
Louis Napoleon attacked Germany to save his own shaking 
throne. Disraeli hoped to cool the Radical effusiveness by 
rousing the national pride. The barren conquests of Henry 
prepared the way for the wars of the Roses. Louis Napoleon 
brought only ruin upon himself. Disraeh failed, as he 
deserved to fail. He thought that he was reviving patriotic 
enthusiasm, and all that he did was to create jingoism. 

Of the tens of thousands who gathered in Hyde Park 
to shout for war how many had considered what a war with 
Russia might involve? Bismarck could not understand 
Disraeli's attitude. 'Why cannot you be friends with 
Russia and settle your differences peacefully?' he said to 

R 2 



344 Lord BEAdoNsFiELt; 

him at the beginning of the dispute. ' Why not put an end 
once for all to this miserable Turkish business, which 
threatens Europe every year or two with war ? ' Why not, 
indeed ? Russian interests and English interests divide the 
continent of Asia. These two Powers between them are 
engaged in the same purpose ofbringing the Eastern nations 
under the influence of Western civilisation. It would be a 
misfortune to humanity if either they or we should cease 
our efforts. The world smiles when we complain of Russian 
aggression. The Asiatic subjects of the Queen of England 
are two hundred millions. The Asiatic subjects of Russia 
are forty millions. The right on both sides is the right of 
conquest. 

They have annexed territories and we have annexed 
territories. Annexations are the necessary results of the 
contact of order with anarchy. If we work together the 
regeneration of Asia may proceed peacefully and benefi- 
cently. If we quarrel in earnest, as things now stand, the 
whole enormous continent will be split into factions, nation 
against nation, tribe against tribe, family against family. 
From the Bosphorus to the Wall of China, and perhaps 
inside it, there will be an enormous faction-fight, with an 
amount of misery to mankind of which no recorded war has 
produced the like. It will be a war, too, which can lead to 
no atoning results. England staggers already under the 
vastness of her responsibilities, and even if she conquers 
can undertake no more. That we might not conquer is an 
eventuality which our pride may refuse to entertain ; yet such 
a thing might happen, and if we are defeated we are a lost 
nation. Russia might recover, but we could not; a disaster 
on the Dardanelles or the Afghan frontier would cost us our 
Indian Empire, 



RUSSIA AND ENGLAND 245 

In such a war we stand to lose all and to gain nothing, 
while in itself it would be nothing less than a crime against 
mankind. We are told that a cordial co-operation with 
Russia is impossible. It will not be made more possible by 
a quarrel over Turkey. Yet to a peaceful arrangement we 
must come at last if the quarrel is not to be pursued till one 
or other of us is destroyed. These are the broad facts of the 
situation, to which the fate of the Principalities or of the 
Bosphorus itself are as feathers in the balance. Disraeli, in 
whose hands for the moment the tremendous decision rested, 
chose to overlook them. He persevered in the policy of 
upholding the Turkish Empire. It was the traditional policy 
of England, and, as he professed to consider, the most con- 
sistent with English interests. It may be that he remem- 
bered also that the Turks had befriended his own race when 
the Russians had been their bitterest enemies. It may be 
that something of his early vanity still lingered in him, and 
that he was tempted by the proud position of being the 
arbiter of Europe. But fact was against him. Turkish rule 
in Europe is an anachronism, and neither force nor diplo- 
macy can prevent the final emancipation of Christian nations 
from Mahometan dominion. He chose a course which 
gave him for a moment an ephemeral glory, but it was at 
the cost of undoing the effects of his whole political life, 
wrecking again the party which he had reorganised and 
giving a fresh lease of power to the revolutionary tendencies 
which threatened the dismemberment of the Empire. 

The Eastern question was beginning to simmer when 
Disraeli came into power, but the symptoms had not yet 
become acute and he had leisure for internal politics. He 
desired to strengthen Conservative institutions. Of these 
the Church of England ought to ha,ve been the strongest, 



246 LORD BEACONSFIELD 

but it was distracted by internal disorders. The Romanising 
/ party was the counterpart of Radicalism. The original Trac- 
tarians had imagined themselves to be champions of old 
Tory principles, but revolutionary movements draw instinc- 
tively together. Romanisers and Radicals had the common 
belief that they were wiser than their fathers, that they must 
have something ' deeper and truer than satisfied the last 
century.' The reformers of the State wished to remodel 
the Constitution, the Ritualists to restore Church principles 
and bring back the Mass. The Radical chief sympathised 
with both of them. They returned his regard; and vast 
numbers of the clergy fell off from their old allegiance. 

Disraeli, keenly as he observed the outer features of the 
situation, was not entirely at home in such subjects. He did 
not see that the lay members of the Church, who had once 
been earnest Protestants, had now grown indifferent about it. 
If the clergy liked to amuse themselves with altars and vest- 
ments and elaborate services the clergy might have their way 
for all that the laity cared about the matter. Old Tory 
families still hated Puritans and Puritanism, and had not 
realised the change of front which made Protestants Con- 
servatives and Radicals into allies of the Papacy. Disraeli 
believed that an Act of Parliament could check a tendency 
which ran in a current where legislation could not reach. He 
. \ passed a Public Worship Act to put down ritualism,^ and it 
^ has been scarcely more effective than Lord John Russell's 
demonstration against Papal aggression. This disease has 
not been checked ; acrimonious lawsuits promoted by a few 
antediluvian Protestant parishioners have failed, and will con- 
tinue to fail, because public opinion refuses to support the pro- 

' It should be said that the Bill, though supported by Disraeli, was 
introduced by the Primate, and was not a Cabinet measure. 



RUSSIA AND ENGLAND 247 

moters. Suffering priests and bishops pose as martyrs, and 
there is unwilhngness to punish them. By the Constitution 
the Church of England rests on an Act of Parhament, but 
sooner than effectively use its controlling power Parliament 
will consent to disestablishment. The Public Worship Act 
exasperated the enthusiastic clergy and their friends. It 
secretly offended not a few of Disraeli's aristocratic followers. 
For the purpose for which it was passed it was as ineffectual 
as, to use President Lincoln's simile, ' a Pope's Bull against 
a comet,' and demonstrations which are not followed by 
action do not add to a statesman's influence. 

This, however, and all other internal subjects lost their 
interest when Servia rose against the Turks, when the 
Servian defeat brought the Russians across the Danube, 
and the passions, the alarms, the panics of the Crimean 
episode revived in all their frenzy. Circumstances had 
altered. England had no longer France for an ally. Turkey 
had then been saved, and allowed a fresh lease of life on 
condition of mending her administration and behaving 
better to her Christian subjects. Turkey had amended 
nothing, and could amend nothing. So far as Turkey was 
concerned, the only result had been a Turkish loan, and 
on this the interest had ceased to be paid. Nevertheless 
the familiar cries rose again. Our old ally was in danger. 
The Dardanelles were the keys of India. We were threatened 
on the Indus, we were threatened in the Mediterranean. 
Quiet voices could get no hearing, and eloquence could be 
only met by eloquence. Mr. Gladstone, if by his Irish action 
he had let loose the winds at home, did a service then which 
must be remembered to his honour. He forced the country 
to observe what the rule of Turkey meant. He insisted, not 
entirely in vain, on the indignity, the shame, the dishonour 



248 LORD BEACONSFIELD 

which we should bring on ourselves by taking the side of 
the Bulgarian assassins. He succeeded in making Disraeli 
pause at a critical time and preventing measures which 
might have led to an immediate conflict, and the Turkish 
successes at Plevna and in Armenia seemed for a time to 
dispense with the necessity of armed interference. The 
Turk, it was hoped, would be able to defend his provinces 
with his own hand. But, as Disraeli said truly, the English 
are the most enthusiastic people in the world. They have 
an especial love for courage, and the bravery of the Turks 
in the field made them forget or disbelieve in the ' atrocities.' 
When Kars fell and Plevna fell, when the Russian armies 
forced the Balkans in the dead of winter, and the Ottoman 
resistance collapsed, the storm rose again into a hurricane. 
Mr. Gladstone and the ' Daily News ' stood their ground. 
Disraeli waived aside the horrible story of Turkish cruelties, 
as, if not false, yet as enormously exaggerated. Such as it 
was the ferocity had not after all cut deep into Bulgarian 
memories. If the dead have any knowledge of what is pass- 
ing upon earth he must laugh in his grave when the Bulgarian 
survivors of these horrors are now inviting the Turks into 
an alliance with them against their Russian deliverers. 
Deeds of violence have been too common in some coun- 
tries to make a deep impression. The fugitive Macdonalds 
from Glencoe were lost in astonishment at the interest which 
political passion had created in the murder of their kins- 
men. Public opinion, so far as it expressed itself in words, 
continued strongly in Disraeli's favour. He said amidst 
general applause that he would not allow Turkey to be 
crushed. He did not desire war, but he was prepared for 
war if the Russians entered Constantinople, and on two occa- 
sions peace h\ing upon a thread. A plan gf campaign wa§ 



THE BERLIN CONFERENCE 249 

formed, not for local resistance but for war on an universal 
scale. The British fleet went up within sight of the Golden 
Horn to cover the Turkish capital, Gallipoli was to be 
occupied. Turkestan was to be set on fire through the 
Afghan country ; and, I believe, so ambitious was the scheme, 
another force was to have advanced from the Persian Gulf 
into Armenia. Not all the Cabinet were prepared for these 
adventures. Lord Carnarvon and Lord Derby resigned, and 
caused some passing hesitation, and as the Russians left 
Constantinople unentered that particular crisis passed away. 
But the Russian conquerors had dictated their own terms of 
peace, and when Disraeli insisted that the terms should not 
stand till they had been revised at a European Conference 
England again applauded and admired. He determined to 
attend the Conference in person, and the remarkable im- 
pression which he produced there was the culminatmg point 
of his singular career. On Prince Bismarck, who respects 
firmness more than eloquence, it was an impression eminently 
favourable. French is the language generally used at the 
meetings of European plenipotentiaries. Disraeli spoke 
French tolerably, and had prepared a French address. It 
was represented to him, however, that his peculiar power of 
creating an effect would be impaired by his accent, and 
he spoke actually in English. There were two points, I 
believe, on which the peace of Europe hung in the balance, 
one referring to Batoum, which was not to be fortified ; the 
other to the division of the two Bulgarias, which the treaty 
of San Stefano had joined. Heavy guns are now mounted 
at Batoum, and we are none the worse for it. The large 
Bulgaria, so much dreaded, has become a fact again, with 
the warm approbation of the anti-Russian Powers. Yet on 
threads sq slight as thes^ the lives or deaths, perhaps, of 



250 LORD BEACONSFIELD 

millions of men at that moment depended. After a stormy 
debate on the Balkan question Disraeli broke up the Con- 
ference and announced that he should return home and 
take other measures. Russia, at Bismarck's entreaty, yielded 
a point which had no substantial significance. Disraeli 
had the glory of extorting a concession by a menace. We 
imagine that the days are past when nations can go to war 
for a point of honour, but we are no wiser than our fathers 
after all. 

War, however, was -avoided, and Disraeli had won his 
diplomatic victory. He returned to London in a blaze of 
glory, bringing peace with honour, and all the world sang 
the praises of the patriot Minister. He thought himself 
that he had secured the ascendency of the Conservatives for 
a quarter of a century at least. In 1876 he had passed 
from the leadership of the House of Commons to the House 
of Lords, reviving in an earldom the title which he had given 
to his wife, and which had died with her. He now received 
the Garter, the most coveted of all English decorations, be- 
cause bestowed usually of free grace and not for merit, but 
for him the reward of his unequalled services. Yet it was 
all hollow. The public welfare, the public security of the 
Empire had not been advanced a step. Before the shouts 
had died away we were astonished by a secret treaty with 
Turkey, by which we had bound ourselves to the future 
defence of her Asiatic dominions, an obligation which we 
shall fulfil as much and as little as we fulfilled a similar 
obligation to Denmark. We had bound ourselves to secure 
a better administration of the Turkish provinces, an under- 
taking which we cannot fulfil ; and we had acquired an 
addition to our Empire in Cyprus, a possession of which we 
can make no use. The country was surprised, and not 



PEACE WITH HONOUR 25 I 

particularly pleased, but on the whole it was still proud and 
gratified, and if Disraeli had dissolved Parliament when he 
returned from Berlin there is little doubt what its verdict 
would then have been. But he waited, believing himself 
secure in his achievements, and Fortune, which had stood his 
friend so long, now turned upon him. The spirit of a great 
nation called into energy on a grand occasion is the noblest 
of human phenomena. The pseudo-national spirit of 
jingoism is the meanest and the most dangerous. A war had 
been lighted in Afghanistan as part of the Eastern policy. 
It was easier to T^indle than to extinguish. Sir Bartle Frere 
in South Africa imagined that he too could have an Imperial 
policy. ' He went to war with the Kaffirs. He went to war 
w^ith the Zulus, whom, if he had been wise, he would have 
helped and favoured as a check upon the ambition of the 
Boers. A British regiment was cut to pieces. The Zulus 
in expiation were shot down in thousands and their nation- 
ality extinguished. Frere's policy was his own ; Lord 
Beaconsfield was not responsible for it, and did not approve 
of it. Yet the war went on. 

The Transvaal had been annexed against the will of the 
people. Disraeli had fallen before that measure had borne 
its fruits, but he lived to hear of Majuba Hill and the 
ignominious capitulation in which, in that part of the world 
also, jingoism came to its miserable end. 

The grand chance had been given to English Conser- 
vatism, and had been lost in a too ambitious dream. Like 
drunkards recovering from a debauch and revolting at their 
own orgies, the constituencies once more recalled the 
Radicals to power with a fresh impulse to the revolutionary 
movement, and Disraeli may have reflected too late on the 
uselessness of embarking on ' spirited policies,' which the 



252 LORD BEACONSFIELD 

next swing of the democratic pendulum may reduce to 
impotence. 

His administration was not useless. Unambitious 
home measures were passed for the comfort or benefit of 
the people, which may be remembered gratefully when 
the Berlin Conference is forgotten. His patronage, and 
especially his literary and art patronage, was generously 
and admirably exercised. John Leech had for twenty years 
made him ridiculous in the cartoons in ' Punch.' Leech had 
a pension which would have died with him. Disraeli con- 
tinued it to his widow and his children. Most notable was 
his recognition of the duty of the country to bestow some 
public honour on Thomas Carlyle. For half a century 
Carlyle had worked his way in disregarded poverty. The wise 
throughout Europe had long acknowledged in him the most 
remarkable writer of his age. He had been admired for his 
genius and reverenced for his stern integrity ; the German 
Empire had bestowed upon him its most distinguished deco- 
ration j but in England it is held that the position which an 
eminent man of letters makes for himself can receive no 
added lustre from the notice of the Government ; and Carlyle 
had been left severely alone in his modest home at Chelsea 
under all the changes of Administration, while peerages and 
titles were scattered among the brewers and the City 
millionaires. Disraeli, who was a man of intellect as well as 
a politician, perceived the disgrace which would attach to all 
parties if such a man as this was allowed to pass away as one 
of the common herd, Carlyle, indeed, had never spoken of 
him except with contempt, but it was Disraeli's special credit 
that while he never forgot a friend he never remembered a 
personal affront. He saw at once that no common pension 
or decoration at so late an hour could atpne for the long 



iDiSRAELi And carlyle 253 

neglect. In a letter as modest as it was dignified he implied 
that he did not offer Carlyle a peerage because a hereditary 
honour would be a mockery to a childless old man ; but 
he did offer in the Queen's name, and pressed him to accept, 
the Grand Cross of the Bath, a distinction never before 
conferred upon any English author, with a life income corre- 
sponding to such a rank. Carlyle in his poorest days would 
never have accepted a pension. Stars and ribands had no 
attraction for him at any time, and less than none when he 
had one foot in the grave. He declined, but he was sensible 
of the compliment, and was touched at the quarter from 
which it came. 

' Very proper of the Queen to offer it,' said the conductor 
of a Chelsea omnibus to me, ' and more proper of he to say 
that he would have nothing to do with it. 'Tisn't they who 
can do honour to the likes of he.' But Disraeli saved his 
country from the reproach of coming centuries, when Carlyle 
will stand among his contemporaries as Socrates stands 
among the Athenians, the one pre-eminently wise man to 
whom all the rest are as nothing. 



254 LORD BEACONSFIELD 



CHAPTER XVII 

Retirement from office — Dignity in retreat — Hughenden — Lord 
Beaconsfield as a landlord — Fondness for country life — ' Endymion ' 
— Illness and death — Attempted estimate of Lord Beaconsfield — A 
great man ? or not a great man ? — Those only great who can forget 
themselves — Never completely an Englishman — Relatively great, 
not absolutely— Gulliver among Lilliputians — Signs in ' Sybil ' of a 
higher purpose, but a purpose incapable of realisation — Simplicity 
and blamelessness in private life — Indifference to fortune — Integrity 
as a statesman and administrator. 

' Was man in der Jugend wiinscht, davon hat man im Alter 
die Fiille ' (What one desires in one's youth one has enough 
of in one's age). 

DisraeH had won it all, all that to his young ambition had 
seemed the only object for which it was worth while to live. 
Yet he had gained the slippery height only, perhaps, to form 
a truer estimate of the value of a personal triumph. It was 
his to hold but for a moment, and then he fell, too late in 
life to retrieve another defeat. When the shadows lengthen 
and the sun is going down, earthly greatness fades to tinsel, 
and nothing is any longer beautiful to look back upon but 
the disinterested actions, many or few, which are scattered' 
over the chequered career. Disraeli, like many other dis- 
tinguished men, had to pay the penalty of his character. 
A fool may have his vanity satisfied with garters and 
peerages ; Disraeli must have been conscious of their 
emptiness. 



FATE OF THE CONSERVATIVE GOVERNMENT 255 

When the result of the elections of 1880 was known he 
again accepted his fate, as Mr. Gladstone had done six years 
before, /Without waiting for the meeting of Parliament. He 
submitted with dignity, though with the fatal consciousness 
that at his age he could not hope to witness a reversal of the 
judgment upon him. He did not talk petulantly of retiring 
from politics. He took his place again as leader of the 
Opposition in the House of Lords, and showed no signs of 
weakened power. But he had always been impatient of 
the details of business, and his chief pleasure was now to 
retire to Hughenden, with or without companions, most 
frequently alone. For a fortnight together he would remain 
there in solitude, wandering through the park or through the 
Bradenham woods, which in his youth had been the scene 
of so many ambitions or moody meditations. His trees, 
his peacocks, his swans, his lake and chalk stream were sadly 
associated with the memories of his married life. He was 
so fond of his trees that he directed in his will that none of 
them should be cut down. He was on pleasant terms with 
his tenants and labourers ; he visited them in their cottages, 
and was specially kind to old people and to little children. 
The 'policy of sewage,' with which he had been taunted as 
a Minister, was his practice as a landlord. No dust-heaps, or 
cesspools, or choked drains, or damp floors were to be seen 
among the Hughenden tenements. To such things he looked 
with his own eyes, and he said he never was so happy as 
when left to himself in these occupations. 

Of his reflections at this period some may be found here- 
after in the papers which he bequeathed to Lord Rowton. 
No particular traces appear in the last literary work which in 
his final leisure he contrived to accomplish. He had left 
'Endymion' half finished when he took ofiflce in 1874; he 



256 Lord beaconsfieLD 

went on with it when office had left him, perhaps because he 
had thought himself obliged to buy a house in London on 
retiring from Downing Street and wanted money. 

There is nothing remarkable in ' Endymion ' except the 
intellectual vivacity, which shows no abatement. It is in 
the style of his earlier novels, and has little of the serious 
thought which is so striking in ' Sybil ' and ' Lothair.' There 
are the same pictures of London fashionable life and fashion- 
able people, in the midst of them a struggling youth pushing 
his way in the great world, and lifted out of his difficulties, 
as he himself had been, by a marriage with a wealthy widow. 
As before many of the figures are portraits. Myra, the 
heroine, impatient, restless, ambitious, resolute to raise her- 
self and her brother above the injuries of fortune, is perhaps 
a likeness of himself in a woman's dress. But the calm 
mastery of modern life, the survey, wide as the world, of the 
forces working in English society, the mellow and impartial 
wisdom which raises ' Lothair ' from an ephemeral novel into 
a work of enduring value, all this is absent. It is as if dis- 
appointment had again clouded his superior qualities and 
had brought back something of his original deficiencies. 
The most interesting feature in ' Endymion ' is the exact 
photograph of the old manor house at Bradenham, and the 
description of the feelings with which a fallen and neglected 
statesman of once brilliant promise retired there into unwel- 
come poverty. Except for this the book might have been 
unwritten and nothing would have been lost of Disraeli's 
fame. It throws no fresh light upon his own character. 
He wanted money and it brought him ten thousand 
pounds. 

The sand ran rapidly out. Lord Beaconsfield was in his 
place at the opening of the session of 188 1. The effects of 



ILLNESS AND DEATH 2$y 

the return of the Liberal party were aheady visible in all 
parts of the Empire. He spoke with something of his old 
force on the state of things which was to be expected in 
Ireland He spoke on India and foreign politics. He 
could not foresee the bombardment of the Alexandrian forts, 
the conquest of Egypt, to be followed by the disgrace of 
Khartoum. He escaped the mortification of the surrender 
to Russia on the Afghan frontier. But he lived to hear of 
the conclusion of the annexation of the Transvaal. He saw 
the enemies of England again at their work across St. 
George's Channel, and a Government again in power whose 
rule was to purchase peace by concession. His own part 
was played out. He had not succeeded, and it \yb.s time for 
him to be gone. In the middle of March he had an attack 
■of gout, which was aggravated by a cold. At first no 
danger was anticipated, but he grew worse day after day, and 
on the 19th of April Benjamin Disraeli had taken his last 
leave of a scene in which he had so long been so brilliant an 
.actor. When an Enghsh statesman dies, complimentary 
funeral orations are spoken over him in Parliament as part 
of the ordinary course ; but Disraeli had been so uncommon 
a man that the displays on this occasion had more in them 
than they often have of genuine sincerity. He had been so 
long among us that his name had become a household word. 
The whole nation, of all shades of politics, felt that a man 
was gone whose place could not be filled, who in a long and 
■chequered career had not only won his honours fairly but 
deserved affectionate remembrance. 

He was infinitely clever. In public or private he had never 
done a dishonourable action ; he had disarmed hatred and 
never lost a personal friend. The greatest of his antagonists 
admitted that when he struck hardest he had not struck in 

s 



258 LORD BEACONSFIELD 

malice. A still higher praise belongs to himself alone — that 
he never struck a small man. 

The Abbey was offered, and a public funeral ; and if 
honour there be in such interments he had an ample right 
to it. By his own desire he was buried at Hughenden, 
by the side of his wife and the romantic friend who had 
conceived so singular an attachment to him. There those 
three rest side by side, Disraeli and his faithful companion 
disguised as Earl and Viscountess, but thought of only by 
the present generation under their own familiar name, and 
the eccentric and passionate widow who had devoted her 
fortune to him. In life there had been a peculiar bond 
between these three. Disraeli had innumerable admirers, but 
there were not many to whom he trusted his inmost con- 
fidence. Gratitude was stronger in him even than ambition, 
and as to his wife and to Mrs. Willyams he owed the most, 
to them, perhaps, he was most completely attached. It 
was a strange union, but they had strange natures, and 
they lie fitly and well together — far away from the world, 
for which neither of them cared, in a quiet parish church in 
Buckinghamshire. 

A biography, however brief, must close with a general 
estimate. What estimate is to be formed of Disraeli ? We 
have a standard by which to measure the bodily stature of 
a man ; we have none by which to measure his character ; 
neither need we at, any time ask how great any man is, or 
whether great at all, but rather what he is. Those whom 
the world agrees to call great are those who have done or 
produced something of permanent value to humanity. We 
call Hipparchus great, or Newton, or Kepler, because we 
owe to them our knowledge of the motion of the earth and 
the stars. Poets and artists have been great men ; philo- 



CONDITIONS OF HUMAN GREATNESS 259 

sophers have been great men. The mind of Socrates governs 
our minds at the present day. Founders of religion have 
been great men ; reformers have been great men : we 
measure their worth by the work which they achieved. So 
in society and poHtics we call those great who have devoted 
their energies to some noble cause, or have influenced 
the course of things in some extraordinary way. But in 
every instance, whether in art, science, religion, or public 
life, there is an universal condition, that a man shall have 
forgotten himself in his work. If any fraction of his atten- 
tion is given to the honours or rewards which success will 
bring him there will be a taint of weakness in what he 
does. He cannot produce a great poem, he cannot paint a 
great picture, he cannot discover secrets of science, because 
these achievements require a whole mind and not a divided 
mind. The prophet will be a prophet of half-truths, because 
the whole truth will not be popular. The statesman who 
has not purified himself of personal motives will never 
purify a disordered Constitution. Even kings and con- 
querors who are credited with nothing but ambition — the 
Alexanders and the Caesars, the. Crom wells and Napoleons — 
have been a cause in themselves, have been the representa- 
tives of some principle or idea. Their force, when they 
have succeeded, has been an impulse from within. They 
have aimed at power to impress their own personality out- 
side them, but their operations are like the operations of the 
forces of nature, working from within outwards rather than 
towards an end of which they have been conscious. A 
man whose object is to gain something for himself often 
attains it, but when his personal life is over his work and 
his reputation perish along with him. 

In this high sense of the word Lord Beaconsiield 

s 2 



260 LORD BEACONSFIELD 

cannot be called great, either as a man of letters or as a 
statesman. ' Vivian Grey ' is nothing but a loud demand 
on his contemporaries to recognise how clever a man has 
appeared among them. In every one of his writings there 
is the same defect, except in ' Sybil' and in ' Lothair.' It is 
absent in ' Sybil ' because he had been deeply and sincerely 
affected by what he had witnessed in the great towns in the 
North of England ; it is absent in ' Lothair ' because when 
he wrote that book his personal ambition had for the time 
been satisfied, and he could look round him with the 
siccum lumen of his intellect. He had then reached the 
highest point of his political aspiration, and money he did 
not care for unless required for pressing necessities. It is 
clear from ' Sybil ' that there had been a time when he 
could have taken up as a statesman, with aH his heart, the 
cause of labour. He had suffered himself in the suffering 
and demoralisation which he had witnessed, and if the 
' young generation ' to whom he appealed would have gone 
along with him he might have led a nobler crusade than 
Coeur de Lion. But it was not in him to tread a thorny road 
with insufficient companionship. He had wished, but had 
not wished sufficiently, to undertake a doubtful enterprise. 
He was contented to leave things as he found them, instead 
of reconstructing society to make himself Prime Minister. 

Thus it was that perhaps no public man in Eng- 
land ever rose so high and acquired power so great, so 
little of whose work has survived him. Not one of the 
great measures which he once insisted on did he carry or 
attempt tO' carry. The great industrial problems are still 
left to be solved by the workmen in their own unions. 
Ireland is still in the throes of disintegration. If the 
colonies have refused to be cast loose from us their con- 



PERSONAL CHARACTERISTICS 261 

tinued allegiance is not due to any effort of his. From 
Berlin he brought back peace with honour, but if peace 
remains the honour was soon clouded. The concessions 
which he prided himself on having extorted are evaded or 
ignored, and the imperial spirit which he imagined that he 
had awakened sleeps in indifference. The voices which 
then shouted so loudly for him shout now for another, and 
of all those great achievements there remain only to the 
nation the Suez Canal shares and the possession of Cyprus, 
and to his Queen the gaudy tide of Empress of India. 
What is there besides ? Yet there is a relative greatness as 
well as an absolute greatness, and Lemuel Gulliver was a 
giant among the Lilliputians. Disraeli said of Peel that he 
was the greatest member of Parliament that there had ever 
been. He was himself the strongest member of Parliament 
in his own day, and it was Parliament which took him as its 
foremost man and made him what he was. No one fought 
more stoutly when there Avas fighting to be done ; no one 
knew better when to yield, or how to encourage his 
followers. He was a master of debate. He had perfect 
command of his temper, and while he ran an adversary 
through the body he charmed even his enemies by the skill 
with which he did it. He made no lofty pretensions, and 
his aims were always perhaps something higher than he pro- 
fessed. If to raise himself to the summit of the eminence 
was what he most cared for, he had a genuine anxiety to 
serve his party, and in serving his party to serve his country ; 
and possibly if among his other gifts he had inherited an 
English character he might have devoted hiinself more 
completely to great national questions ; he might have even 
inscribed his name in the great roll of English worthies. 
But he was English only by adoption, and he never com- 



262 LORD BEACONSFIELD 

pletely identified himself with the country which he ruled. 
At heart he was a Hebrew to the end, and of all his triumphs 
perhaps the most satisfying was the sense that a member 
of that despised race had made himself the master of the 
fleets and armies of the proudest of Christian nations. 

But though Lord Beaconsfield was not all which he 
might have been he will be honourably and affectionately 
remembered. If he was ambitious his ambition was a 
noble one. It was for fame and not for fortune. To money 
he was always indifferent. He was even ostentatious in his 
neglect of his own interests. Though he left no debts 
behind him, in his life he was always embarrassed. He had 
no vices, and his habits were simple ; but he was generous 
and careless, and his mind was occupied with other things. 
He had opportunities of enriching himself if he had been 
unprincipled enough to use them. There were times when 
he could set all the stock exchanges of Europe vibrating 
like electric wires in a thunderstorm. A secret word from 
him would have enabled speculating capitalists to realise 
millions, with no trace left how those millions were acquired 
or how disposed of. It is said that something of the kind 
was once hinted to him — once, but never again. Disraeli's 
worst enemy never suspected him of avarice or dishonour. 
As a statesman there was none like him before, and will be 
none hereafter. His career was the result of a combina- 
tion of a peculiar character with peculiar circumstances, 
which is not likely to recur. The aim with which he started 
in life was to distinguish himself above all his contem- 
poraries, and wild as such an ambition must have appeared, 
he at least won the stake for which he played so bravely. 



263 



INDEX 



ADV 

Adventures in Spain, 30-35 

Afghanistan, war with, 251 

' Alabama ' claims, the, 201, 

Albania, 36-40 

' Alroy,' an Eastern story, 45, 49 

Alvanley, Lord, fight with O'Connell, 

62 _ 
American Civi War, 158, 159, 163, 183, 

194, 2Q 

Anecdote of the Prince of Wale j s 

wedding, 184, 185 
Angels, on the side of, at Oxford, 177 
Annexations, 244 
' Arabian Nights,' offer to edit, -64 
Aristocracy of England, the, 86, 107, 

109, 112, 113, 187, 192-194, 217 
Arms, 186, 187 
Arta, 37 . . ^ 
Arundel, Miss, m Lothair,' 226-230 
Athens, 40, 42 
Austen family, the, 20-24, 28, 48 

Baillie Cochrane, 102 

Banditti in Spain, 30-34 

Bar, Disraeli and the, 22, 24, 27 

Baring, Sir Thomas, 54-56 

Batoum, 249 

Beaconsfield, Lord (see Benjamin 

Disraeli) 
Beckford and ' Alroy,' 49, 53 
Bentinck, Lord George, 140 ; and Peel, 

142-146; death of, 147 (see also 'Life 

of Lord Bentinck ') 
Berlin Conference, 249, 250, 252, 261 
Billault, death of, 185, 186 
Birth and early days, 12-14, 69 
Bismarck, Prince, and Russia, 233 ; 243 ; 

and Berlin Conference, 249, 250 
Blessington, Lady, 50, 52, 54, 108, 156 
Bolingbroke, Lord, 97, 98 
Bradenham, 24, 25, 28, 34, 44, 58, 255, 

256 
Bnggs, Mr., 43 
British Empire, the, 238-241, 244, 24 , 

250 
Buckle, 203 
Buller (Yarde), 68 
Bulwer, Lytton, 40, 49, 51, 55 ; and 

Disraeli's speeches, 65 ; 108 
Burdett, Sir F., 55 ; and O'Connell, 70 
Burghley, Lord, 237 
Burke, 69 
Burns, Robert, 187 
Byron 21, 23, 36, 65 



CON 

Cadiz, 32 

Campbell, Sir J., and D.'s maiden 

speech, 72, 73 
Canning, death of, 132 ; lines on ' A 

Candid Friend,' 134; Peel and, 143-146 
Carlton Club, 60 ; elected at, 64 ; dinner 

at the, 68, 6q 
Carlyle on Lord Beaconsfield, i 3, 130 ; 

'Shooting Niagara,' 1-3, 195; and 

Reform, 55 ; and the ' Disraeli ' 

science, 79 ; and the Corn Laws, 80 ; 

and Jews, 84 ; ' Past and Present,' 92, 

93 ; and Puseyism, 95 ; and Free 

Trade, 151 ; on Parliamentary Reform, 

160 ; and ' Lothair,' 218 ; honours for, 

252, 253 
Carnarvon, Lord, 195, 249 
Carriage incident, the, 89 
Carringtons, the, 54-56 
Carthage, the Jews in, 4 
Catholic emancipation, Peel and, 131 

143-146; 203 
Catholic question, the, 22 
Chandos, Lord, 57, 72 
Charles I. and Ireland, 60, 98, 102, 103 
Chartists and Chartism, 59 ; petition of 

1839, 85, 86, 93 ; 94, loi 
Chatham, Lord, 243 
' Childe Harold ' compared to ' Con- 

tarini,' 46, 49 
Christianity, 169-172 
Church of England, revival of, 94-99, 

102 ; and State, 170-177 ; 200, 204, 306 

245-247 
Church of Ireland, the, 204-211 
Civil War in America, 158, 159, 163, 183, 

194, 201 
Clay, James, 35, 36 
Cobden, Mr., 81, 82; and Free Trade, 

136 ; 150 ; and the Crimean War, 

157. 

Coercion Bills, 102, 142-146, 209 

Cogan's school. Dr., 15-17 

Colenso, Bishop, 170, 173, 175 

' Coningsby ; or, the New Generation — 
Sidonia, 88 ; married life in, 89 ; Dr. 
Newman and, 108 ; outline o 108- 
119 ; 127, 128, 215 ; the Reformation 
in, 226 

Conservative constitution, in ' Conings- 
by,' 110-112, 117 ; 35 years out of 
office, 192 ; 251, 252 

Constantinople, 40 

' Contarini Fleming,' school-days pic- 



264 



LORD BEACONSFIELD 



COR 

tured in, 15-19 ; 28 ; passages from 

45-48 ; 49, 215 
Copyright Bill, 73, 74 
Corfu, 36 
Cornish, Dr., 29 
Corn Laws, 79-82, 93, 94, 130 ; Peel and, 

137-143 ; Bill for repeal of, 140, 141 ; 

league, 150 
Crimean War, 157, 242, 243, 247 
Croker, Wilson, 22 
Cuddesden, B. D. at, 173 
'Curiosities of Literature,' by Isaac D., 

10 
Cyprus, 41, 250, 261 

Darwin, followers of, 172, 173 ; ' Origin 
of Species,' 173 

Death, 257 

Democracy, 192 

Derby, Lord, 149, 157, 188, 191, 193, 
196, 249 

Devilsdust in ' Sybil,' 121-123 

Dickens and ' Pickwick,' 23 

D'Israeli, Isaac, and the Jewish people, 
5, 6 ; boyhood of, 8-1 1 ; family of, 12, 
13 ; abandons Judaism for the Church 
of England, 13, 14 ; pictured in 'Vivian 
Grey,' 18; and High Wycombe election, 
55 ; death of, 179 

Disraeli, Benjamin, the elder, 7-1 1 

— James, son of Isaac D., 13 

— Ralph, son of — , 13, 36 

— Sarah, daughter — , 12, 13 ; and Wm. 
Meredith, 44 

Disraeli, Benjamin, birth and education, 
12-16; baptism of, 14; school days, 
16-19 ; and London society, 19, 50, 
58 ; enters a solicitor's office, 22 ; first 
novel, 23-25 ;travpls abroad, 24-44,99 > 
Bradenham, 24-25 ; satires of, 25-27 ; 
dress and manners, 29, 39, 53, 55; im- 
proved health, 34, 35 ; the poetical life, 
45-49 ; prose writings, 49 ; political ambi- 
tion,5o, 51 ; portraits of, 52-54 ; financial 
embarrassments, 52, 64,^ 65, 69, 178, 
179 ; a Radical, 54 ; High Wycombe 
election, 55-57 ; on marrlage,'58 ; takes 
seat in H. of C, 68, 119 ; maiden 
speech in the House, 70-73 ; outset of 
Parliamentary career, 74 ; a Conser- 
vative, 94, 95 ; political and religious 
belief, 83, 84 ; Carlyle and, 84, 92, 93, 
130, 252, 253 ; and dinner at White- 
hall Gardens, 85 ; marriage of, 88-90 ; 
Church views of, 94-99 ; creed, 108 ; as 
Sidoniain 'Coningsby,' 113 ; and Sir R. 
Peel, 131-137, 144-147 ; and Tory party, 
139, 140 ; leader of Opposition, 149- 
156 ; remarkable speeches of, 160-164 j 
literary work, 165-168 ; religious views, 
168-172 ; at Oxford, 173-177 ", and Mrs. 
Willyams, 179-187 ; Chancellor of the 
Exchequer, 188 ; arms and motto, 
186, 187 ; and Parliamentary Reform, 
199, 202; Prime Minister, 196-198, 235- 



GER 

242 ; wife, 211 ; and Ireland, 211 r 
writings, 216 ; return to power, 235 ; 
on the abolition of slavery, 236 ; and. 
Russia, 248, 249 ; retirement from 
office, 254, 255 ; illness and death, 
257 ; general estimate of, 258-262. See 
also Novels, Speeches, Satires, and 
Elections 

D'Orsay, Count, 50, 58, 62, 92, 108 

Dress, 29, 39, 53, 55, 70, 92, 173 

Ducrow speech, 65 

DufFerin, Lady, and D.'s dress, 53 

Duncombe, Tom, 86, 108 

Durham, Lord, 57 

Early ambition, 18, 21 

Eastern Question of 1843, the, 103, 104 ;, 
of 1877, 244-250 

Education, 13-19 

Effects of Mr. Gladstone's policy, 213,. 
214 

' Egremont,' S8 

Egypt, 43 

Eldon, Lord, and Toryism, 68 

Elections, see High Wycombe, Taunton 
Maidstone, Shrewsbury 

Eliot, Lord, 50 

' Endymion,' Ferrars in, 24, 25, 88, 178, 
255, 256 

England, the Jews tn, 5, 7 ; past and 
present, 74-82 ; trade, 76 ; Christi- 
anity, 81; progress in, 9r, 92; and 
economists, 93, 94 ; revival of Church 
of, 04-99, i°2 ; feudal system of, 97 ; 
tne aristocracy of, 86, 107, 109 112, 
113, 187, 192-194, 217 ; Constitution 
in ' Coningsby,' 114-119, 127, 128 ; 
working of English Government, 125,. 
126 ; party government in, 153-156 ; 
wealth of, 161 ; warning against play- 
ing with the Constitution, 162-164, 
188 ; and Protestantism, 203 

English Constitution, a satire on, 26, 
27 

Evangelicals, the, 204 

Exhibition of 1851, Mrs. Willj^ams and,, 
180 ; of 1862, 183 

Family history, 6-11 
Fenian Rebellion of 1867, 201, 202 
Feudal system in England, 97 
Financial embarrassments, 64, 65, 69,. 

T-l\ 179 
Fleuriz, governor of Cadiz, 32 
France, and L. Napoleon, 156, 157 ; 

revolution in, 163 ; and Germany, 232 
Franchise Bill, a, 195 
Free Trade, 78-82, 92, 100, 125, 131 ; 

and Progress, 149-152 ; effects of, 160,. 

161 ; 1^3, 238 
Frere, Sir Bartle, 251 

'Genius of Judaism,' by IsaacDisraeli,. 

5-6, 13, 14 
Germany and Carlyle, 25 



INDEX 



265 



GIF 

braltar, 29-31 ; Government House at, 

29) 30 

Gladstone, Mr. W. E., speech on Ire- 
land, 202 ; Irish policy, 204-214 ; 235 ; 
and Turkey, 247 

'Globe ' and O'Connell, 64 ; 70 

Gore, Mrs., 50 

Gospel, the new, 129, 130 

Granada, 33, 34 _ _ 

Grandison, Cardinal in ' Lothair,' 
220-230 

Grant, Chas., 50 

Greece, 36, 39 ; and Lord Stanley, 184 

Greville, Chas., 57 

Grey, Lord, 54, 59, 162 ; Reform Ca- 
binet, 191 ; 's son, 55, 56 

Hanover, King of, loi 

Hartington, Lord, 212, 235 

' Henrietta Temple,' 65, log, 215 

Herbert (Sidney), 135, 136 

High Wycombe election, 54-58, 60, 65 

Holland, the Jews in, 7 ; Isaac Disraeli 

sent to, 9 
Holy Land, the, 28 
Hope, H., 102, 108 
House of Commons, first visit to, 50, 51 ; 

65, 6g ; maiden speech in, 70, 71 ; 

power in the, 100, loi ; and Ireland, 

104-106 ; and Disraeli, 139, 140 
Hughenden Manor, 179 ; life at, 182, 183, 

255 ; buried at, 258 
Human greatness, condition of, 25&-260 
Hume, 55, 56 
Hunting, 58 

India, 234, 238-240, 261 
Indian Mutiny, the, 158, 183 
* Infernal Marriage,' 26, 27, 217 
Inquisition, the, and the Jews, 6 
Ireland, 59 ; in ' Popanilla,'6o ; 65, 70, 71, 
^ 98, 102-106, 136 ; famine in, 138, 142 ; 

Fenianism in, 200-203 ; Church of, 204- 

211 ; 233, 237, 238, 242, 260 
Irish Education Bill, 235 
Irvine's (Washington) story of the Inn 

at Terracina, 33 

Ixion in Heaven,' 26, 27 

Jaffa, 41 

Jerusalem, visit to, 41-43, 230 
Jews, the, 4 ; of Spain, 5, 6 ; in Venice, 
6, 7 ; in Holland, 7 ; Carlyle and, 84 ; 
in Parliament, 155 ; Europe and the, 
166 ; Judaism, 169, 170 ; and decora- 
tion, 2t6; in Parliament, 234; see 
also ' Genius of Judaism' 

Kaffir War, 251 
Knatchbull, Sir E., 145 

Labouchere, Mr., 60 
Landowners of Ireland, 202, 203 
— Act of 1B70, 237 
Lara, the house of, 6 



o'co 

Leech, J., and Punch, 252 
Lemprlere's dictionary, 26 
Lennox, Lord William, 50 
Letters, 84 ; on his travels abroad, 24- 

44; to "The Times' re O'Connell, 62, 

63 ;_ Runnymede, 64 ; to sister about 

maiden speech, 71-73 : to Mrs. 

Brydges Willyams, 182-187 
Lewis, Mr. and Mrs. Wyndham, 51, 67 ; 

death of Mr., 88 
' Life of Lord George Bentinck,' 108 ; 

SirR. Peel in, 131 ; 145, 146, 165, 168, 

179, 226 
London ; society in, 19 ; of to-day, 151 
' Lothair,' Preface to, 98, 99 ; outline of, 

215-231 ; 256, 260 
Lyle, Mr., in 'Coningsby, iii 
Lyndhurst, Lord, 57-59, 64, 147 

Macaulay, 50, 203 

Madden's memoirs of Lady Blessington, 

Maidstone, returned for, 67, 100 

Majuba Hill, 251 

Malaga, adventure at, 33 

Malta, 35,- 36 

Manners, Lord John, 102 

Maples, Mr. and 'Ben,' 22 

Marney, Lord, in 'Sybil," 120, 121, 130 

Marriage of B. D., 88-90 

Maule, Fox, 86 

Maurice, Fred, 176 

Maynooth grant, the, 136 

Melbourne, Lord, 59, 67, 68, 71, 87 ; 

91, 196 
Mentana, battle of, in ' Lothair,' 226-228 
Meredith, William, 28-44 
Miles, Mr., and agriculture, 135 
Millbank and English aristocracy, 112 ; 

state of parties in England, 117-119, 

130 
Milman, and ' ContarinI,' 46, 49 
Monmouth, Lord, in ' Coningsby,' 110 
Moore, Tom, 50 
Morgan, Lady, 50 
Motley, Mr., 53 
Motto, 186, 187 
Mount of Olives, the, 42 
Mowbray, Lord, in 'Sybil,' 120,121, 130 
Mulgrave, Lord, 50 
Murray, John, 22, 23 
Myra, in ' Endymion,' 256 

Napoleon, Louis, 156, 157, 159, 185, 226, 

243 
Norton, Mrs., 50 
Newman, Dr., secession from the 

Church, 98, 99 ; and ' Coningsby,' 108 

Novels.^ See 'Contarini Fleming,' 

' Vivian Grey,' ' Endymion,' ' Tan- 

cred,' 'Alroy,' ' Coningsby '—Sidonia 

'Sybil,' 'Lothair,' &c. 

— heroes of his political, 87, 88 

O'Connell (Morgan), and Disraeli, 55, 



266 



LORD BEACONSFIELD 



oco 

58-65 ; and Sir F. Burdett, 70 ; and 
Ireland in 1843, 102, 104 ; 136 

O'Connor, T. P., ' Life of Lord Beacons- 
field,' Ireland in, 105, 106 

Oxford, Church at, 84 ; Tractarian 
movement at, 107, 108, 203 ; High 
Churchmen at, 172 ; B. D. at 173-177 

Palmerston, Lord, 100, loi, 103, 159, 
242, 243 _ _ 

Paris, Isaac Disraeli in, 10, 12 ; dinner, 
with Louis Philippe, loi 

Parliament and Disraeli, 3, 4 ; in 
'Coningsby,' 117-119 ; Jews in, 234 

Parliamentary government, Carlyle 
and, I 

Penal laws, 205, 208, 209 

Personal characteristics, 260-262 

Philippe, Louis, loi, 185 

Philpotts, Bishop, 68 

Peel, Sir Robert, first meeting with, 50 ; 
59 ; and O'Connell, 63, 104 ; 68, 69, 71, 
72, 74, 84-87, 94, 99; in 1841, 100- 
102 ; and Eastern Question, 103 ; in 
* Coningsby,' no, in ; 119, 129 ; and 
Disraeli, 131-137 ; and Canning, 134, 
143 ; and Free Trade, 135, 136, 192, 
193 ; challenge to D., 136, 137 ; 
and the Corn Laws, 138-143 ; and 
Lord Bentinck, 144-146, 168 ; fall of, 
146, 147, 212 ; Disraeli and, 261 

Pitt, 21 ; the younger, 69, 98 ; the 
elder, 146 ; and Warren, 187 ; the 
two, 242 

Plato and Greece, 132 ; and religion, 
171, 172 

Poems, Isaac D.'s, 10, 11 

Poet, a, or not a poet? 47-49 

Poland, 185, 186 

Political economy, 78, 93, 94, 129, 130 

' Popanilla,' 26, 27, 60 

Poticary's school, Mr., 13, 14 

Press representation in ' Coningsby,' 
118, 119 

Prince Imperial, the, 213 

Progress, 147, 148 

Protection, 78-82, 193 

Protestantism, 77, 203 ; in Ireland, 202, 
203 

Public schools, 15 

Public Worship Bill, 172, 246, 247 

Puseyism at Oxford, 94-96 

' Quarterly Review,' January 1889, 
20, 49 

Radicals In Parliament, 59, 70, 74, 246 

Ramie, plain of, 42 

Rathcormack massacre, the, 59 

Rationalism, 172, 173, 204 

Redshid Pasha, 36-40 

Reformation, the, 207 

Reform Bill of 1867, Carlyle and, 1-3 ; 
59, 68, 85, 94 ; effects of, 96-98 ; 125 ; a 
new, 188-192, 198, 199, 202, 234 



SYB 

' Revolutionary Epic,' a poem, 45, 48, 108 

Rogers, Samuel, 22 

Rose, Dr., of Wycombe, 64 

Rothschild, 186 

Rowton, Lord, 255 

Runnymede letters in ' The Times,' 64 

Russell, Lord John, 74 ; and the Chartist 
riots, 86 ; and Ireland, 105, 106 ; and 
Corn Law, 132 ; 137-139, 145, 162 ; and 
Reform Bill, 188 ; and the Polish 
Question, 185 ; 246 

Russia and the Black Sea Treaty, 232, 
332 ; 243-245 ; in Asia, 244 ; and 
Turkey, 247-250 

Salisbury, Lord, 195 

Satires. See ' Ixion in Heaven,' 

' Popanilla,' ' The Infernal Marriage,' 

&c. 
School life, 14-19 
Scott, Sir W., and Isaac D.'s poems, 

10, II 
Self-defence, the art of, 17 
Servia, 247 
Seville, 33 

Seymour, Sir H., 157 
Shiel (Irish leader), 50, 73 
' Shooting Niagara,' by T. Carlyle, 1-3, 

195 

Shrewsbury election, 100 

Sidonia in 'Coningsby,' 113-116, 127 

Slavery, abolition of, 236 

Smyth, George, 102 

Smythe, Sir H., hunting with, 58 

Spain, the Jews of, 5, 6 ; visit to, 28, 29 ; 
adventures in, 30-35 

Spanish families and crests, 187 

Speeches, at the ' Red Lion,' High Wy- 
combe, 55, 56 ; at Taunton, 61, 62 ; at 
Wycombe, 65 ; Ducrow, 65 ; maiden — 
in House of Commons, 70-73 ; on Copy- 
right Bill, 73, 74 ; during Peel's Minis- 
try, 133-138 ; on Free Trade, 135, 136, 
140 ; on the Corn Laws, 137-138, 140- 
142 ; on the effects of Free Trade, 
160, 161 ; on playing with the Consti- 
tution, 160-164 ; at Oxford, on the 
Church, 173-177 ; on tricks with 
British Constitution, 188 ; on secret 
committees, 212, 213 ; at Manchester, 

214 ; at the Crystal Palace, 1872, 239 ; 
at Berlin Conference, 249 

Stanley, Dean, 175 

— Lord, 139 ; and Greece, 184 

Strafford and Ireland, 60 

Strangford, Lord, 63 

Strauss, followers of, 172, 173 

Suez Canal, 43 ; shares, 261 

Swift, the satire of, 26 
Sybil ; or, the Two Nations,' dedicated 
to his wife, ^88, 89 ; 92 ; Reform Act in, 
96-98 ; extracts from, &c., 119-129, 

215 ; the Reformation In, 226 ; 256, 
260 



INDEX 



267 



TAD 

Tadpole and Taper in ' Sybil,' 125, 
126 

'Tancred; or, the New Crusade,' im- 
pressions of the Holy Land in, 41-43 ; 
sketch of, 165-168 ; 215 

Tariff of 1842, the, loi 

Taunton election, 60, 64 

Theodora, in ' Lothair,' 221-226 

Theories of life, 169, 170 

'Times,' letter to, about O'Connell, 62, 
63 ; Runnymede letters in, 64 
v^Tractarians at Oxford, 107, 108, 204 ; 
Mr. Gladstone a, 207 ; 246 

Trafford, 130 

Transvaal, 251 

Travels abroad, 24-44 

Troy, the plain of, 41 

Turkey in 1843, 103, 104 ; 157, 243, 244 ; 
and Russia, 247-250 ; treaty with, 250 

Turks, the, 36-38 

Turner, Mr. Sharon, 14 

Tyre, the Jews and, 4 

Under-Secretaries of State, 86 

' Venetia,' 65, 109, 215 
Venice, the Jew in, 6, 7 
' Vestiges of the Natural History of 
Creation,' 166-168 



ZUL 

' Vindication of the British Constitution' 

59) 64 
'Vivian Grey,' school-days pictured in, 

15-19 ; and the Bar, 21 ; and the 

Church, 21 ; a successful novel, 23-25 ; 

the ' Young Duke ' in, 25 ; 28, 29, 46, 

49, 215, 260 
Voltaire on Ireland, 208, 242 

Wales's wedding, the Prince of^ 184, 

185 
Wellington, the Duke of, 57, 63, 64, 99 
' What is he ? ' a political pamphlet, 57, 58 
Whigs, and Ireland, 59-61 ; 67, 70 ; 

ministry in 1865, 188 
Wife, his, 88-90, 211 
Wilberforce, Bishop, 173 
William IV., death of, 67 
Willis, N. P., sketch of Benjamin 

Disraeli, 5% 53 
Willyams, Mrs. Brydges, of Torquay, 

179-187, 258 _ _ 
Wiseman, Cardinal, in ' Lothair,' 220 

Yanina, visit to, 36-40 

Young Englanders, the, 102, 107, 109 

Zulus, the, 213 ; war with, 251 



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HISTORY OF THE UNITED NETHERLANDS, from the Death of Will- 
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English-Dutch Struggle against Spain, and of the Origin and Destruc- 
tion of the Spanish Armada. By John Lothrop Motley, LL.D., D.C.L. 
With Portraits. Four Volumes in a Box, Svo, Cloth, with Paper La- 
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Books of Interest to Readers of English History. 3 

LIFE AND DEATH OF JOHN OF BARNEVELD, Advocate of Hol- 
land. With a View of the Primary Causes and Movements of the 
" Thirty Years' War." By John Lothrop Motley, LL.D., D.C.L. Il- 
lustrated. Two Volumes in a Box, 8vo, Cloth, with Paper Labels, Un- 
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THE CORRESPONDENCE OF JOHN LOTHROP MOTLEY, D.C.L., 

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$11 50. {In a Box.) 

THE HISTORY OF THE UNITED STATES. First Series.— Fvom the 
First Settlement of the Country to the Adoption of the Federal Con- 
stitution. Second Series.- — From the Adoption of the Federal Consti- 
tution to the End of the Sixteenth Congress. By Richard Hildreth. 
6 vols., Svo, Cloth, with Paper Labels, Uncut Edges and Gilt Tops, 
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A SHORT HISTORY OF THE ENGLISH COLONIES IN AMERICA. 

By Henry Cabot Lodge. Svo, Half Leather, $3 00. 

HARPER'S POPULAR CYCLOPEDIA OF UNITED STATES HIS- 
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PICTORIAL FIELD-BOOK OF THE REVOLUTION; or, Illustrations 
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PICTORIAL FIELD-BOOK OF THE WAR OF 1812; or, Hlustrations 
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Traditions of the last War for American Independence. By Benson 
J. Lossing. With 882 Illustrations. Svo, Cloth, $7 00 ; Sheep, $8 50 ; 
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HISTORY OF THE ENGLISH PEOPLE. By John Richard Green, 
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A SHORT HISTORY OF THE ENGLISH PEOPLE. By John Rich- 
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THE MAKING OF ENGLAND. Bv John Richard Green. With Maps. 
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THE CONQUEST OF ENGLAND. By John Richard Green, M.A., 
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THE INVASION OF THE CRIMEA : its Origin, and an Account of its 
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MEMOIRS OF WILHELMINE, Margravine of Baireuth. Translated and 
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A HISTORY OF OUR OWN TIMES, from the Accession of Queen Vic- 
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A SHORT HISTORY OF OUR OWN TIMES, from the Accession of 
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A HISTORY OF THE FOUR GEORGES. By Justin McCarthy. In 
Four Volumes. Vols. I. and II., 12mo, Cloth, $1 25 each. 

A HISTORY OF THE INTELLECTUAL DEVELOPMENT OF EU- 
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HISTORY OF FREDERICK II., called Frederick the Great. By Thomas 
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LETTERS AND SPEECHES OF OLIVER CROMWELL, including the 
Supplement to the First Edition. With Elucidations. By Thomas 
Carlyle. 2 vols, 12mo, Cloth, $2 50. 

HISTORY OF THE FRENCH REVOLUTION. By Thomas Carlyle. 
2 vols., 12mo, Cloth, $2 50. 

THE EARLY KINGS OF NORWAY; also an Essay on the Portraits of 
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THOMAS CARLYLE. By James Anthony Froude, M.A. Portraits and 

Illustrations. 2 vols., 12mo, Cloth, $1 00 each. 

THOMAS CARLYLE. By M. D. Conway. lU'd. 12rao, Cloth, $1 00. 

MRS. CARLYLE'S LETTERS. Letters and Memorials of Jane Welsh 
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REMINISCENCES BY THOMAS CARLYLE. Edited by J. A. Froude. 
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Books of Interest to Readers of English History. 5 

MEMOIRS OF PRINCE METTERNICH, 1'7'73-1829. Edited by Prince 
Richard Metternich. The Papers Classified and Arranged by M. A. 
de Klinkowstrora. 3 vols., 12mo, Cloth, $3 00. 

A HISTORY OF THE CHURCH OF ENGLAND. From the Accession 
of Henry VIII. to the Silencing of Convocation in the Eighteenth Cen- 
tury. By Rev. G. G. Perry, M.A., Canon of Lincoln, With an Ap- 
pendix, containing a Sketch of the History of the Protestant Episco- 
pal Church in the United States of America. By J. A. Spencer, S.T.D. 
Crown 8vo, Cloth, $2 50. 

A TEXT-BOOK OF CHURCH HISTORY. By Dr. John C. L. Gieseler. 
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American Edition, Revised and Edited by Kev. Henry B. Smith, D.D., 
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POLITICAL HISTORY OF RECENT TIMES (18 16-1 875). With Spe- 
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Appendix covering the Period from 1876 to 1881, by the Rev. John 
P. Peters, Ph.D. 12mo, Cloth, $2 00. 

THE CONSTITUTIONAL HISTORY OF ENGLAND, from the Acces- 
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THE MIDDLE AGES. View of the State of Europe during the Middle 
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THE CONSTITUTIONAL HISTORY OF ENGLAND FROM 1760 TO 
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MOHAMMED AND MOHAMMEDANISM. Lectures delivered at the 
Royal Institution of Great Britain in February and March, 1874. By 
R. Bosworth Smith, M. A., Assistant Master in Harrow School ; late 
Fellow of Trinity College, Oxford. With an Appendix containing 
Emanuel Deutsch's Article on "Islam." 12mo, Cloth, $1 50. 

A SHORT HISTORY OF PARLIAMENT. By B. C. Skottowe, M.A., 
New College, Oxford. 12mo, Cloth, $1 25. ' 

THE TREATY OF WASHINGTON : its Negotiation, Execution, and the 
Discussions relating thereto. By Caleb Gushing. Crown 8vo, Cloth, 

$2 00. 

LIFE, TIMES, AND CHARACTER OF OLIVER CROMWELL. By E. 
H. Knatchbull-Hugessen, M.P. 32mo, Paper, 20 cents ; Cloth, 35 

cents. 



6 Books of Interest to Readers of English History. 

THE EARLY HISTORY OF CHARLES JAMES FOX. By George Otto 
Teevelyan, M.P., Author of "The Life and Lettei's of Lord Macau- 
lay." 8vo, Cloth, Uncut Edges and Gilt Top, $2 50 ; Half Calf, $4 75. 

A HISTORY OF ENGLAND TO THE SEVENTEENTH CENTURY. By 
tlie Right Hon. Sir James Mackintosh, M.P. 3 vols., 12mo, Cloth, 

$3 00. 

THE HISTORY OF MODERN EUROPE ; with a View of the Progress 
of Society, from the Rise of the Modern Kingdoms to the Peace of 
Paris in 1'763. By W. Russell. With a Continuance of the History 
by William Jones. Illustrated. 3 vols., 8vo, Cloth, $6 00 ; Sheep, 
%1 50; Half Calf, $12 75. 

THACKERAY'S LECTURES. Containing the EngHsh Humorists and 
the Four Georges. By W. M. Thackeray. Complete in One Volume; 
12mo, Cloth, $1 25. 

HISTORY OF THE AMERICAN CIVIL WAR. By John W. Draper, 
M.D., LL.D. In Three Volumes. 8vo, Cloth, $10 50 ; Sheep, $12 00 ; 
Half Calf, $17 25. 

THE HISTORY OF FREDERICK THE SECOND, called Frederick the 
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THE FRENCH REVOLUTION OF 1789, as Viewed in the Light of Re- 
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THE HISTORY OF NAPOLEON BONAPARTE. By John S. C. Abbott. 
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NAPOLEON AT ST. HELENA ; or, Interesting Anecdotes and Remark- 
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Montholon, Antommarchi, and others. By John S. C. Abbott. Illus- 
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HISTORY OF THE REVOLT OF THE NETHERLANDS; Trial and 
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HISTORY OF THE THIRTY YEARS' WAR. By Frederick Schiller. 
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LIFE AND TIMES OF THE REV. SYDNEY SMITH. Based on Family 
Documents and the Recollections of Personal Friends. By Stuart J. 
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Books of Interest to Readers of English History. 7 

BOSWELL'S LIFE OF JOHNSON, including Boswell's Journal of a 
Tour to the Hebrides, and Johnson's Diary of a Journey into North 
Wales. Edited by George Birkbeck Hill, D.C.L., Pembroke College, 
Oxford. Edition de Luxe, 300 copies printed, each copy of which is 
numbered. In Six Volumes. Large 8vo, Leather Back and Cloth 
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similes, &c. {In a Handsome Box.) Price, $30 .00. 
Popular Edition, 6 volumes, Cloth, Uncut Edges and Gilt Tops, $10 00. 

WHAT I REMEMBER. By Thomas Adolphus Trollope. With Por- 
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MY AUTOBIOGRAPHY AND REMINISCENCES. By W. P. Frith, 
R.A. With Portraits. 2 vols., 12mo, Cloth, $1 50 each. 

GEORGE ELIOT'S LIFE, as Related in her Letters and Journals. Ar- 
ranged and Edited by her Husband, J. W. Cross. Portraits and Illus- 
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EPISODES IN A LIFE OF ADVENTURE ; or. Moss from a Rolling 
Stone. By Laurence Oliphant. 12mo, Cloth, $1 25. 

CHARLES READE, D.C.L., DRAMATIST, NOVELIST, JOURNALIST. 
A Memoir compiled chiefly from his Literary Remains. By Charles L. 
READEandtheRev. ComptonReade. With Portrait. 12mo, Cloth, $1 25-. 

SOME LITERARY RECOLLECTIONS. By James Payn. With Portrait. 
12rao, Cloth, $1 00. 

MEMOIRS OF A MAN OF THE WORLD. Fifty Years of London Life. 
By Edmund Yates. With Portrait. ]2mo. Cloth, $1 75. 

AUTOBIOGRAPHY OF LEIGH HUNT. 2 vols., 12mo, Cloth, $8 00. 

LIFE OF MARY RUSSELL MITFORD, Told by Herself in Letters to her 
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THE FRIENDSHIPS OF MARY RUSSELL MITFORD, as Recorded in 
Letters from her Literary Correspondents. Edited by the Rev. A. G. 
K. L'Estrange. 12mo, Cloth, $2 00. 

STEVENS'S MADAM DE STAEL. A Study of her Life and Times. 
By Abel Steyens, LL.D. Two Steel Portraits. 2 vols, 12mo, Cloth, 
$3 00. 

LIFE OF LORD BYRON, AND OTHER SKETCHES. By Emilio Cas- 
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MOORE'S LIFE OF BYRON. Letters and Journals of Lord Byron. By 
Thomas Moore. 2 vols., 8vo, Cloth, $4 00. 



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THE EARLY LIFE OF JONATHAN SWIFT (leeY-lVll). By John 
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8vo, Cloth, |2 50. 

EDWARD BULWER, LORD LYTTON. Life, Letters, and Literary Re- 
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ANTHONY TROLLOPE'S AUTOBIOGRAPHY. With a Portrait. 12mo, 

Cloth, $1 25. 

THE LIFE OF JOHN LOCKE. By H. R. Fox Bourne. 2 vols., 8vo, 
Cloth, $5 00. 

SAMUEL JOHNSON. His Words and His Ways ; What He said. What 
He did, and What Men Thought and Spoke Concerning Him. Edited 
by E. T. Mason. 12mo, Cloth, $1 50. 

THE LIFE OF SAMUEL JOHNSON, LL.D. Including a Journal of a 
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THE LIFE AND TIMES OF LORD BROUGHAM. Written by Him- 
self. 3 vols., 12rao, Cloth, in box, $6 00. 

THE LIFE AND CORRESPONDENCE OF ROBERT SOUTHEY. Ed- 
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MEMOIR AND LETTERS OF SARA COLERIDGE. With Portraits. 
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ENGLISH MEN OF LETTERS. Edited by John Morley. 12mo, Cloth, 
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Wordsworth. — Dryden. — Landor. — De Quincey. — Lamb. — Bentley.-^ 
Dickens. — Gray. — Swift. — Sterne. — Macaulay. — Fielding. — Sheridan. 
— Addison. — Bacon. — Coleridge.— Sidney. — Keats. 

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